By Brian Bennett
One swallow doesn’t make a summer nor one result make a football season.
However, Ashington FC’s assistant manager Liam McIvor was understandably delighted on Saturday after the Colliers had won for the first time in nine matches in the East Division of the Pitching In Northern Premier League as they look to get out of the drop zone.
McIvor saw second half goals from Liam Henderson and substitute Louis Burns clinch a 2-1 victory over Lincoln United who had Kane Hutchinson-Wilkes on the score sheet.
The win didn’t take Ashington out of the bottom four but a cock-a-hoop McIvor said afterwards: “It was a massive win. The scoreline says 2-1 but potentially on another day it could have been four or five. We really deserved it. From the first minute to the 90th I thought we were outstanding – and this on the back of a run of bad results. We wanted the lads to stand up and be counted and that’s exactly what they did today. To be honest the conditions were an absolute mudbath but we couldn’t have asked for any more from the players.”
McIvor reflected on a first half which somehow remained goal-less: “We created some good chances,” he said, “We’ve had one cleared off the line and a header which fell to Karl Ross – and they were big opportunities and I think if we had gone in at the interval 1-0 up no-one could have argued because we were the team who were creating the chances. At half time, we just asked the lads to remain positive and to keep taking the game to them (Lincoln United) because I feel that if we sit and absorb pressure we concede goals and we cannot afford to do that – we need to give it a go. The plan was to use our wide men – Josh Gilchrist and Liam Miller – and I thought the two of them were outstanding and were a threat.”
McIvor was disappointed with the goal which Ashington conceded: “Lincoln got back on terms after an error which shouldn’t have happened – but we responded,” he said, “If the game had finished a draw we would have been kicking ourselves at a missed opportunity and two points dropped so credit to the boys who kept going. It was a great substitution by manager Nick Gray to put Louis Burns on. With his first touch he has scored the winner – so what more can you say?”
Ashington now head into a sequence of matches where four of their next five are at home and McIvor added: “The games we have in the run up before the turn of the year are against sides in the bottom ten so we’ve got to be taking points off teams. It’s a long season and we need results on the table. Today’s victory was a start – it was 100 per cent deserved – but now we’ve got to back it up.”