By Brian Bennett
Ashington provided their manager Nick Gray with the perfect pre Christmas pick-me-up tonic when they won 1-0 against Bishop Auckland on Saturday.
A solitary goal by Craig Spooner – his sixth of the season – was all that separated the two sides with his early strike bringing the Colliers a fourth victory on the bounce.
And Gray – who had been feeling a bit under the weather during the week – got a much needed boost after an encouraging display from his side.
“I thought we started the game well,” said Gray afterwards, “We got into some good areas and scored a great goal. The first one (goal) is always important and we got it after a good move. After Liam Noble had pressed the ball, it was a great delivery from Louis Burns and finished off well by Craig Spooner. I thought we would take things on from there and for the next 10-15 minutes we were good – but the last quarter of an hour we let them (Bishop Auckland) into the game although they never hurt us and I thought they played quite a bit in front of us.”
He continued: “Second half, although it wasn’t the greatest game of football I still thought we were likely to score at times and we had a couple of great opportunities. Then they’ve got a penalty when Josh Cairns has showed a bit of naivety. He was too tight trying to win the ball and defending is sometimes about seeing the ball out of play – but he’s only young and he’s done really well in training. However goalkeeper Matty Alexander stepped up to the challenge, made himself big and made a great save.”
Gray added: “Overall I thought we deserved to win the game and it was also nice to keep a clean sheet. I keep on saying that you earn your luck in football and we deserved that little bit of luck because we were the better side today and winning breeds confidence.”
The Woodhorn Lane boss was delighted with the debut performances from the vastly experienced Chris Reid and Liam Wotherspoon. Reid lined up at the heart of the defence whilst Wotherspoon came on as a substitute and played just behind striker Liam Henderson: “I knew Harry Powell was unavailable this weekend so I asked Chris Reid – who I’ve known for a long time – if he would do us a favour,” said Gray, “Chris is a leader and a winner and you could see that on the pitch. We’ve got some young players in the squad and Chris (Reid) added know-how to the team. He gave other players a lift and we looked more like a team of experienced men today.”
Gray went on: “After Josh Gilchrist had been forced off with an injury, Liam Wotherspoon replaced him and gave us plenty of energy. Liam was hungry to go on and I thought he did really well. You could see he was trying to get into the box and make things happen and he worked hard. I just thought the other players bounced off both Chris (Reid) and Liam (Wotherspoon) and it was a great team effort today.”