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.
I was very pleased with both the performance and the result at Dartford on Saturday and felt that we fully deserved our 2-1 win.
The first-half performance was excellent, as we started very sharply and showed high energy levels. James Lawrie was very influential, doing well to find pockets of space that made things difficult for our opponents.
One of the occasions that he managed to do that led to our first goal, picking up a great ball from Peter Cavanagh and then linking well with Nicky Clee, who picked out Damian Reeves’ clever run and a smart finish put us in the driving seat.
The first half display was particularly pleasing, as we arrived at the ground later than we would have liked because of traffic issues and sometimes you can be left on the bus when that happens… but that certainly wasn’t the case at all.
Watch highlights from the win at Dartford:
We doubled our lead, early in the second half with a goal that had a bit of controversy about it.
James Lawrie jumped for Jordan Sinnott’s high ball, but there was doubt whether he glanced it on with his head. If he didn’t then Damian Reeves was definitely onside, but if he did get a touch, then the linesman had a decision to make and it was right in his quarter of the pitch, so the official was well positioned to get it right. What there is no doubt of is that Reeves’ finish was of the highest quality.
It’s possible that we subconsciously fell into a bit of a lull after that and to give credit to Dartford, they came back at us to halve the deficit with a shot that deflected off Luca Havern.
Despite being reduced to 10 men, when Peter Cavanagh was shown a second yellow and a red card, we saw the game out and overall it was a solid workmanlike performance and you can never get enough of those.
We now face two difficult games in 72 hours over Easter, with Southport visiting the J Davidson Stadium on Good Friday and then we head north to Tyneside to take on Gateshead at The International Stadium on Monday, with both games having a 3pm kick off.
We are on 53 points now and it would be nice to get into the sixties and finish in the top half of the table, but for the moment, we must concentrate on our next game and that’s Southport, who have been doing well under new manager, Paul Carden, in recent weeks.
