Nathan Haslam saw his Bay side beat Whickham 4-2 in his first home game as manager and the performance in very difficult windy conditions clearly delighted the new boss.
“I’m really happy with the result, obviously. The conditions out there were really hard and Whickham caused us all sorts of problems with their directness and set pieces. The lads were brave on Saturday but they’ve come up a level tonight, and they’ve won everything. Luke Taylor went through the pain barrier. He’s 19 years old and got better and better as the game went on. It’s the sort of attitude that I want to see. Yes, we got that third goal just after half time and at 3-0 up you should be ok but the conditions were so much in their favour it wasn’t quite like that tonight. They scored that long range wind-assisted one but then there was the sucker punch when we got down the other end to make it 4-1 and it’s knocked the stuffing out of them really. Under the conditions we had, I’m absolutely delighted the way the lads have played.”
Craig McFarlane was back in the side while Kieran Brannen started the game and the manager was impressed with both players. “Craig brings experience to us, brings another dimension and was unlucky not to score. I’m really chuffed with him. Kieran’s an individual, he can turn it on. He’s definitely got something, he can turn defences about. We just need to work on him a bit positionally. It looked like he was tiring a bit towards the end, the ground was heavy so I took him off. Dan Wright’s got a great football brain, he’s streets ahead, he keeps the ball, makes decisions and it was nice to see him get in the box and score tonight as well.
“My philosophy is about playing attractive football. We created a hatful of chances tonight and that’s the way to keep the fans happy!”
