We go into the bank holiday weekend looking to build on our first win of the campaign on Tuesday night against Whitby Town.
We created a lot of chances and it was frustrating that we didn’t put more than one of them away. Josh Hancock could easily have scored three or four times and Tom Peers was very unlucky to have a class finish ruled out by the assistant referee flagging for offside, that was almost a carbon copy of what happened at Matlock last Saturday… I am still not sure how we didn’t get at least a point out of that game but we ended up on the wrong end of a 1-0 scoreline.
Watch highlights of the win against Whitby:
We now face two games in three days over the bank holiday weekend and with less than 48 hours between this afternoon’s home game against Coalville Town and Monday afternoon’s local derby at Witton Albion, we may well need to use all of the players available to me and Neil Sorvel.
Tom Hannigan completed his one-match suspension on Tuesday and is available again, so we now have more central defensive options after James Jones came in for his debut against Whitby and was a real steadying influence alongside Ben Harrison, who has been outstanding so far for us.
Matchwinner Josh Hancock is interviewed after Tuesday’s win:
John Disney is still struggling with his ankle injury, fortunately Simon Richman has slotted in superbly at right back to cover. Shaun Densmore will be available for the Witton game but it may be too early for him to be involved again, as he will have only just got back from the USA and may be suffering from the effects of jet-lag.
Max Harrop is away this weekend and not available to us, so we are not flush with bodies, but I still expect to be able to field a strong team and bench in both games.
Coalville won their first points of the season, with a late goal at Grantham in midweek and are a big strong side that like to tackle. They have a couple of likely match winners in Massiah McDonald and Nathan Watson and they have just signed Cleveland Taylor from Matlock, who we came up against at Barwell, when Neil and I were at Nantwich.
The fans played a massive part with superb vocal support on Tuesday night and it would be fantastic if we could repeat that at the J Davidson Stadium today and at Witton on Monday.
Pictures: Michael Ripley
