Ashington manager Marc Ellison admitted that his outfit ‘let themselves down’ after they conceded a late goal and went down 2-1 against Heaton Stannington at Willow Park on Bank Holiday Monday.
After ex Collier Cyril Giraud had given the home side the lead early in the second half, a right foot thunderbolt from Ryan Donaldson with a little over five minutes remaining looked like rescuing a point for Ellison’s side until substitute Sado Djalo popped up in the fourth and final minute of time added to net the winner.
Ellison said: “We weren’t at our best today, far from it. I spoke after Saturday about consistency, and in terms of our performance, I think we’ve let ourselves down this afternoon. Having said that, we knew it was going to be a tough place to come. Not many teams come here and pick up points, so to get ourselves back to 1-1 with, what, five minutes left, we’ve got to manage the game a lot better. We’ve got to recognise that it maybe hasn’t been our day, take the point and get out of here. That’s three league games in a row now that we’ve conceded with virtually the last kick of the game, and it’s just not good enough. That’s five points dropped in the last seconds of games. We could have found ourselves right at the top end of the table, but instead, this afternoon, we’re looking at the other end of it. It’s so, so frustrating because it’s difficult to plan or prepare for those moments. But at the same time, we have to start taking responsibility for them and managing those situations better.”
He continued: “Probably, if I’m being brutally honest, we didn’t really deserve anything out of the game today. But there’s that old cliché that taking points when you’re not playing well is the sign of a good team. We could have been sitting here having a completely different conversation, saying we’ve had a tough opening month and come through it unbeaten. But unfortunately, I can’t really defend the performance or some of the decision-making this afternoon. I thought we looked okay at times in the second half, and you can’t knock the boys for getting themselves back into the game. But once we get back to 1-1, we just need to have a bit more about us. A bit more maturity to see the game out and take what we can from it.”
He added: “The way it’s happened today probably magnifies the goals we’ve conceded in the last couple of league games as well. Teams across the league will be looking at us now and thinking, just stay in the game, they’ll give you one eventually. That can’t happen. We need to mature as a group, and we need to do it quickly, because that’s the difference between being where we want to be and constantly looking over our shoulder again.”