‘Let’s finish on a high note’
CROWS BOSS WATTERS DELIGHTED WITH TEAM AFTER POPPIES WIN
ROYSTON Town boss Chris Watters hailed a “dominant” performance from his side as they recorded a convincing 4-0 victory against Kettering Town on Saturday.
Kian Harness netted a first-half brace for the Crows at Garden Walk, before Ronnie Henry and Andronicos Georgiou scored in the second half to round off an impressive win.
The victory was Royston’s biggest win of the season to date, and Watters felt that the performance showcased what he wants to see from his side.
“[We were] dominant I think, from the first whistle through to the 93rd or whatever it was. I think that there was only one team in it,” the Crows’ boss told his club’s website.
“I’ve heard a couple of murmurs about they didn’t show up, I don’t think we let them.
“I’ve been disappointed with the first-half performance in the last three games, and that was a discussion in there. It was again like ‘we need to put on a show for people’, but I think that for me, where we’re trying to build something, if I could bottle something and someone would say ‘what’s your side?’, that’s that.
“It’s probably the 75th or 76th minute, we’re 3-0 up I think at that point, and I’ve still got five bombing past their backline. The movement off the ball was outstanding, the work rate was excellent, the simplicity of the passing was of high quality, we supported the front man.
“We had them scrambling for quite a while, [we were] trying to work out how they press and they break up the build-up in play.
“As we kept saying to the lads in there, to start with we could go through them, then they changed and we had to go around them, and then they kept flirting backwards and forwards.
“I think especially against a club like Kettering, we’ve dictated play, and it’s one that we can be really, really proud of.”
The win leaves the Crows eighth in the Southern League Premier Central table, on 57 points from 38 matches played, with just two games of the season now remaining.
Royston travel to face 13th-placed Stourbridge on Saturday, before rounding off their campaign with a home clash against fifth-placed Stratford Town.
The Crows have won six of their last ten matches, and Watters has expressed his desire to finish the season strongly despite his side not being able to make the play-offs.
“We’ve got aspirations. If you look at Mickleover last year, they had a really good end to the season, and that’s what I want to do,” the manager added.
“I feel like we’ve got a bit of a settled group, compared to where we were at. I remember travelling to Alvechurch last year and I thought ‘I don’t know who’s going to be here next year’, saying that I didn’t even know if I was going to be here.
“When we look at it, you’ve got a side that are looking to sustain places, and whilst we’ve got that, we might as well work on the principles that we want to go with next year.
“Ultimately, we went through that poor period (earlier in the season), we then changed it and we went 4-42, and it was very ugly, but it was effective and we were winning games.
“Then it just got to a point where we said as staff ‘look, let’s build for next year, let’s learn to see who can and can’t do what we want to do’.
“I think if you bottle that and you take that, I think everyone’s ticked the box with what we need, but ultimately I want that week in, week out. That bravery to shift and move, but the work rate off the ball.
“I want to finish as high as possible, I want to get as close to the playoffs as we possibly can, and I want to take that confidence into pre-season, so the idea is to win both games.”