Whitley’s very impressive 2-0 victory at Marske, which was voted Northern League performance of the week, delighted the management team and Marc Nash praised the efforts of every one of his players. “I thought the win was fully deserved after a very disciplined and committed performance on a shocking playing surface. It’s rare to see both teams trying to play out from the back and Marske are a very dangerous side and are also the league’s form team but we don’t seem to be fazed with whoever we are facing these days. Again, we were missing big players like Cal Anderson, Tibo, Josh Nearney and Noah Summers who has been a revelation since stepping up from the reserves. Then Kempster could only make the bench with a slight hamstring problem. Even so, to a man we were fantastic and laid the foundations for the win with an excellent shape and discipline when we didn’t have the ball, and we threatened every time we attacked and could easily have scored a couple in the first half. The chat at half time was around belief and that we weren’t settling for a point because we were good enough for all three. After a few early set-pieces to defend I wouldn’t say we were under any real pressure and Tom Flynn was hardly tested then it was our turn to carve out the openings and Scott Jasper is getting into great positions but most importantly he’s working the goalkeeper and Kyle has pounced on a rebound to give us the lead. We’ve conceded a couple of late goals at Shields and Thornaby but we seemed to be more streetwise as a result of that as we managed the game very well and punished them further with Alex’s 50th goal for the club. Everything went right I suppose as Kempster comes on and scores set up by another substitute Callum Patton with our third change being young Brannen who doesn’t fear anything at his age so he comfortably slotted in and helped see the game out. We said before the game that this was maybe a marker to see where we were at and we’ve proved we can compete with the best on occasions.”
