By Brian Bennett

Ashington’s assistant manager Liam McIvor was seething after the final whistle and slammed the Colliers’ display after the 3-0 defeat against Emley on Saturday.

“It was a hard one to take,” he said afterwards, “I thought for the first 20 minutes there was nothing in the game and then they scored. I’m always harping on about doing the basics – and the goal came from us not doing that due to a bit of communication and a silly throw in which developed into a 50-50 that we didn’t win – and the ball ends up in the back of the net.”

After Chris Dawson had added a second for the hosts, McIvor was pleased to hear the half time whistle. “We needed to ‘man up’ because for the last 25 minutes of the first half we were awful,” he added, “It was like men against boys. It wasn’t good enough and that’s not acceptable. I thought we started the second half brightly and if Sam Davison had scored when he had a chance then it would have changed the picture a bit.”

He went on: “Our attitude before the game was right and young ‘keeper Tyler Jones has pulled off some great saves again. However, that wasn’t a performance by a Nick Gray/Liam McIvor side and I felt embarrassed that we got clapped off by our fans who back us no matter what. I didn’t think it was as bad a showing as against Consett recently when we lost 4-0 – but it was along those lines.”

He concluded: “We’ve got a game on Wednesday night against what I call a proper team (Redcar Athletic) and if we don’t turn up with the right mentality, we’ll get rolled over. Nick (Gray) and myself will be looking for a reaction but one thing about us is that we raise the bar against the better teams. Redcar certainly fit into that category but if we raise the bar then I know we can match them.”