Marc Nash and his management team were clearly delighted with the performance that brought Whitley a 2-1 victory in their local derby at North Shields. The manager acknowledged the importance of the win for the fans as well as the players. “It was another enjoyable game for the supporters but this time we took the bragging rights after showing tremendous character to come from behind against a far more experienced and streetwise North Shields team. I have to say we didn’t start very well but that’s understandable when it’s only the second game since our Vase match a month ago. We’ve trained hard but there’s no substitute for competitive matches. We knew their threat but we didn’t stop the cross that led to Harmison’s goal so it was frustrating to fall behind. The wind was proving to be tricky for us to try and play out but we persevered and started to pin Shields back in the last 15 minutes of the half. We then worked their keeper a couple of times and the pressure paid off with a foul on Matty that gave us the penalty. It was a pressure kick because it was a great time to score and Tom showed fantastic composure to get us level going in at half time. There was a massive air of confidence at half time and we really fancied ourselves to get the three points, especially with the added help of the wind because we felt they would struggle to get out as we did. We picked a side full of mobility in the hope that we could wear them down in the latter stages but we’ve grabbed an early goal and I said to Callum afterwards that not many players would have scored a derby winner on their full debut but he did that with such a sharp finish under pressure. Shields came back at us after a couple of changes and to be fair they had more possession as we got deeper. As ever we threatened on the break but apart from conceding the penalty we’ve dealt with everything pretty well and managed the game much better than last time to see the game out. For once we had plenty of depth in terms of senior players available and we had so much experience on the bench that we never really looked vulnerable in the later parts of the game so all in all a great evening for the club, especially with the starting eleven having an average age of just 21.2.”
