By Brian Bennett
Ashington missed the opportunity to claim three precious points in their bid to climb away from the lower reaches of the East Division of the Northern Premier League on Friday night as they lost 3-0 against Newton Aycliffe at Woodhorn Lane.
After Josh Gilchrist had missed a fourth minute penalty for the home side, Aycliffe scored all three goals in the second half through Jack Clarkson, Scott Fenwick and Tom Henson.
On Halloween, the evening developed into a horror show for the Colliers and manager Nick Gray revealed afterwards that he hit one of his lowest points in years of management: “I’ve been in football a long time and tonight is probably one of my lowest ebbs as a manager,” he said, “It was really disappointing, it really hurts and I take full responsibility. It’s my squad and the buck stops with me. We spoke about the importance of the game but I thought in the first half there was only one player – Ryan Donaldson – who passed the ball well. There wasn’t a lot in the game and I thought both teams gave the ball away cheaply.”
He continued: “Second half, you always know the first goal is going to be crucial and to be fair we’ve given away a poor goal from a set piece. Then you seemed to see the energy sucked out of the players a little bit and we made Newton Aycliffe look like Brazil in the end. It’s a squad we’ve assembled on what resources we have and you try your best. Some Ashington supporters booed us at the end and they have got the right to do that. I think there have been games where they haven’t done that and have stuck by us but tonight they did. In general, the fans have been great and I cannot fault them.”
He added: “I think the lads just expected things to happen. At half time we didn’t have a pop at them. We said we had worked hard enough but we’d given the ball away far too cheaply. If you don’t do that (pass the ball well) then you’re going to find it hard against any team.”
In the fourth minute, Josh Gilchrist missed a penalty but Gray said: “Josh has been great for us and obviously he didn’t mean to miss from the spot. Yes it was a chance but we had other opportunities in 86 plus minutes to try and put things right. We didn’t do enough to win the game and it’s hurting.”