Sir John’s still up for Bees chase

A RELIEVED John Askey gladly accepted the intervention from the referee in seeing off Welling, and he’s not giving up on the title yet.

The sign of a good side is supposed to be victory when they’re below-par, and the Macc Town manager says his men at least showed the character to come through in the end.

“We had to work hard, we didn’t play as well as we have been and we struggled,” conceded Askey after the 3-2 victory that saw them keep pace with Barnet and Bristol Rovers.

“We hadn’t played for a bit and I thought we were fortunate to end up with the three points.

“They’ve shown good character all season so it becomes expected, and winning’s a good habit to get into, that’s what we’re doing.

“Sometimes you wonder how but we had quite a few chances that we should have taken but it wasn’t to be.

“We got sloppy in the second half and gave a goal away but they showed good character to then come back and not let it affect us.”

Although Macc had by far the greater number of chances – 11 to two on target – the manager was less than enthused by what he’d seen in the first period, aside from the 28th-minute penalty and Anthony Jeffrey’s needless second yellow card in injury-time.

“I couldn’t tell if it was a penalty from where I was sat, if it was against me I’d say it looked a bit harsh so we probably had a helping hand,” conceded Askey. “I don’t think they can have any complaints about the red card though, it’s just ill-discipline.

“I’m sure their manager isn’t very happy with the lad but obviously it helped us.

“At half-time I thought we had to keep the ball better than we had done in the first half, especially with them going down to 10 men.

“We’d said we had to work a little bit harder, because I thought we looked a little bit lacklustre.

“We didn’t close people down well enough or get the second ball but the main thing was to keep the ball and eventually open them up, which we did.

“One thing that we did do was get more crosses in than we have done previously.”