SOUTHPORT & BIRKDALE
SOUTHPORT and Birkdale skipper Chris Firth has urged his players to look up towards mid-table respectability rather than down towards relegation as they prepare for the final two months of the 2019 season.
In common with every other first-team game in the Liverpool Competition, S&B’s match against Lytham was abandoned without a ball bowled on Saturday, leaving
Firth’s side 17 points ahead of eleventh-placed
Colwyn Bay but only 32 behind
Wallasey, who lie seventh.
However, rather than focusing on a struggle to avoid a possible return to the
First Division,
Firth wants his team to consider what they might achieve with a good run of results over the final eight games of the season.
“I looked at the table earlier this week and our goal has to be seventh place,” said Firth. “We need to look up rather than down but getting to seventh will be difficult,
given that Gary Keedy will be missing for three of our remaining games.”
There was really no possibility of any cricket being played at Church Road on Saturday.
S&B’s players travelled to the Fylde and Firth won the toss before the rain set in. However, it is the second time this season that a match against the ECB Premier League’s bottom-placed club has been either wrecked by rain or completely abandoned and Firth believes S&B would be better placed had either game been played to a conclusion.
“I think you would have backed us to win one of the matches a g a i n s t Lytham given a dry day,” he said.
“But it’s been a very odd few months with the weather and I feel as though we have barely played a home game. It’s been up and down, hit and miss - we can use all the clichés.”
But despite the fragmented nature of the 2019 season to date, Firth reserved particular praise for Isaac Lea, whom he identified as his team’s outstanding performer.
“It’s been such a stop-start season with the weather and availability that no strong trends have emerged but I think Isaac has been our best cricketer,” he said.
“He’s an excellent batsman and a brilliant fielder, whose opportunities to bowl have been restricted this summer but will come in time. Our best performance so far has been Leigh away and I’ll be looking to the players to reproduce that sort of form over the next eight games.”
Orrell Red Triangle are the visitors to Trafalgar Road this Saturday, when
S&B will be without
Keedy but should be strengthened by the presence of
Harry May, who has missed recent games because of work commitments.
S&B’s Premier
League programme until the end of the season:
August 3: Orrell
Red Triangle (H);
August 10: New
Brighton (A); August
17: Bootle (H); August
24: Rainhill (H);
August 31: Ormskirk
(A); September 7: Colwyn Bay (H); August 14:
Northern (H); August 21: