Our failure to launch at Spennymoor
A HAPPY new season to you all.
It’s been a long, football free few months waiting for the fixture list then the pre season frendlies and finally August arrives and County are back in meaningful action.
Jim has put together a new squad of players that on paper look better than last season, even without Danny Lloyd and Lewis Montrose the current squad do appear to be a more complete team.
O’Halloran has added experience to the defence, upfront Oswell will get the goals, Stevenson has the pace while midfield is unrecognisable Walker, Warburton should be able to dominate any game.
So with that said it was off to Spennymoor and our first ever visit to Brewery Field.
The Fingerpost Flyer was buzzing with anticipation and excitement at 10am with all the hope that a new season can bring, the return journey had a feeling of realism and just a hint of disbelief.
We arrived in the north east in plenty of time, even with the M1 delays; there was a beer tent, nice pies a few picnic tables and a pitch that was more “hill” than slop.
The home supporters were friendly and with no segregation there was plenty of banter
We lost the game 1-0, I can take that, Spennymoor were rightly buoyant after promotion at the end of last season and they’ve had a sugardaddy throw some money at them over the summer so we knew this would be a difficult opening fixture. However, the truth of the matter is we just weren’t up for it.
The pace of Stevenson never materialised, Oswell was marked out of the game by two centre backs that knew their job, the midfield seemed to be out of their depth, giving the ball away far too often and the defence, without being under serious threat, looked unsure of who they were supposed to be marking.
We even managed to mess things up when we were given a gift of a penalty, Matty Warburton’s spot kick was right at the home keeper, it just summed up the afternoon.
It’s hard to be too critical after just one match but it’s obvious for all to see that we got it wrong on so many levels and to be honest we didn’t deserve anything from the game at all.
There’s no need for any doom and gloom at the moment. Tuesday night will have brought Curzon Ashton to EP, I hope Jim will have worked his magic and lifted spirits