Altrincham FC manager Lee Sinnott will be giving us the inside track on the Robins’ return to the Conference. Here’s his latest column for Altrincham Today.
After four games in which we had performed well but only gained one point, we played poorly at Welling on Sunday but managed to come away with all three points. Ryan Crowther produced the one moment of quality in the game to score the only goal, a quarter of an hour from the end.
Ryan had been on the pitch less than 10 minutes and he created the opening neatly before finishing well from near the edge of the penalty area. It’s pleasing to now have 49 points on the board with nine games still to play, but our performance throughout the game was a long way short of what we are capable of and how we have been playing in recent games.
The players looked tired. Whether that was caused by the long journey down to Kent the day before or the early kick off, I’m not really sure, but there wasn’t much happening out there to get anyone excited.
Below: Ryan Crowther’s winner live on BT Sport
We return to the J Davidson Stadium on Saturday, when Wrexham are our visitors. Kevin Wilkin’s team have had a strange season, struggling to find consistency in the league, but doing wonderfully well in the main cup competitions.
It’s only two months since they played Premier League Stoke City in the third round of the FA Cup and they took the lead with less than 15 minutes to play at the Britannia Stadium, before conceding three goals in the last 10 minutes.
A couple of weeks ago, they completed a comprehensive 5-1 semi-final aggregate win, against Torquay, to progress to an FA Trophy final date at Wembley against North Ferriby United at the end of the month and we know that every Wrexham player will be doing as much as they possibly can against us, to try to earn a place in that showpiece game.
The televised game at Welling focused, quite rightly, on Stuart Coburn’s fantastic achievement of breaking the club appearance record and for the Wrexham game, there will be a special programme produced, devoted, almost completely, to the great man himself and his marvellous career at Altrincham.
There has been one very sad event at the club this week, as we lost one of our club stalwarts. Peter Warburton had been suffering with cancer of the oesophagus and he passed away on Tuesday.
Peter was a great club volunteer, always cheerful and very keen to help in any way he could. He will be missed very badly and the condolences of everyone at Altrincham Football Club go to his wife, Madeline and Peter’s family and friends.
Top: Alty players celebrate after scoring against Forest Green Rovers last month (Michael Ripley). Below: Lee Sinnott interviewed on BT Sport after last weekend’s win
