By Brian Bennett

It was a crestfallen Liam McIvor who emerged from the Ashington dressing room after promotion chasers North Ferriby had come back from a two goals deficit and scored a stoppage time winner at Woodhorn Lane on Saturday.

The defeat rubbed more salt into already sore wounds for the Wansbeck outfit following their semi-final defeat in the Newcastle Flooring Northumberland Senior Cup against Morpeth Town in midweek.

McIvor admitted that the sending off of defender Ben Williams on the hour had changed the game. The Colliers held a 2-0 lead when Williams was shown a straight red card for a DOGSO – denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity – but the assistant manager added that there were no excuses and that the players ought to have gone on and won the game.

“After going out of the semi-final of the cup on penalties, it was a demoralising defeat,” he said, “I just hope today’s result doesn’t come back to bite us when we look back at the end of the season. We were cruising at 2-0 – absolutely cruising- and they (North Ferriby) didn’t even test us. The sending off has changed the game and killed us but we were 2-0 up and should still have gone on to win the game. The three goals which we gave away were a disgrace and there are no excuses.”

McIvor had been pleased with the way the first half had panned out: “We came in 1-0 up and I was quite happy,” he added. “The goal followed great play and was a good finish by Josh Gilchrist. We had something to hold onto and then we started the second half really well. Gilly (Gilchrist) got his second (goal) early in the second half and we were in cruise control. In that situation you’ve got to see the game out but unfortunately, we didn’t. Ben Williams is last man and it’s probably a sending off if I’m honest, but we’ve put ourselves in that situation where we should be a bit cleverer. After that things went downhill and we haven’t done our jobs defensively.”