Glorious Guisborough 7-match unbeaten run comes to an end with Heaton defeat Marske progress

By Mark Hathaway

Since the last edition of Coastal View, Marske have created a new record by making the last 32 of the FA Trophy for the first time in their history, but more of that later in this article.

Unfortunately, and other than the FA Trophy victory, the last six weeks have been really frustrating for Marske with a number of games postponed due to the wet or frozen weather. This started with the long away trip to Nantwich Town where the game was called off at 9.45am just as the coach was about to leave Middlesbrough.

The following midweek saw North Riding League side South Park Rangers make the visit to Mount Pleasant for a North Riding Senior Cup game. Marske had no recognised keeper available with loanee Michael Roxburgh on warm weather training with Huddersfield Town and back-up Jaan Yaqub was away, which meant that centre half and skipper Adam Wheatley had to play in goal. The game finished 2-2 after 90 minutes meaning that the game went to penalties, where the away side ran out 8-7 winners following penalty misses from Andrew May and Alex Storey. South Park now travel to Northallerton Town in the quarter finals and we wish them well for the remainder of the competition.

December started with Lancashire side Bamber Bridge making the trip to Marske. In a game of three penalties, it was the away side who were victorious by 2 goals to 1. After a goalless first half, Bamber Bridge were awarded a penalty on 47 minutes, following a foul by Michael Roxburgh, with Macauley Wilson beating the keeper from the spot. Marske were awarded a penalty of their own 5 minutes later following a foul on Jason Kennedy. Dale Hopson stepped up to score the resulting penalty. As the game entered injury time Kennedy was penalised for a foul with Wilson netting a second penalty to send the points back to Lancashire.

By Bill Perfitt

Asuperb Guisborough Town seven-match unbeaten run came to an end with a 2-0 defeat at Northern League Division One new boys Heaton Stannington in the Priorymen’s first game of the 2023 New Year on 7 January.

Despite the defeat Guisborough Manager Steve Bell was proud of his players’ performance but he was furious at what he felt was a very poor performance by young and inexperienced match officials.

After the match Steve commented: “I was really pleased with the performance of my team today. I told the lads they had been brilliant.

“However, although I very rarely talk about the match officials but today I’m afraid to say I thought they were a disgrace.

“I hold my hand up by admitting that today I probably got a few things wrong and for sure the players weren’t perfect – but when a football game at our level gets officiated by young, inexperienced and bordering on incompetent people then we’ve got no chance.

“Good luck to Heaton for winning the game but I honestly feel we dominated most of the game and if we had just got one goal then we would have gone on to get four!

“I’m obviously really disappointed with the result today but I’m more passionate about the standard of the people who are being sent out to referee our games – young kids with not much life experience. It’s just not good enough,” Steve concluded.

The defeat at Heaton was Guisborough first since they got beat 3-1 at Redcar Athletic way back in October last year.

STRAIGHT WINS

Following that reverse the Priorymen then reeled off six straight wins on the trot, including a 5-1 win over Richmond Town in the North Riding Senior Cup which earned them a short trip to Redcar Town

There followed a period of real frustration with the away game at Belper (frozen pitch) and home games against Liversedge (waterlogged) and South Shields (frozen pitch) falling victim to the bad weather. Next up was the big FA Trophy game at home to fellow Northern Premier League Premier Division side Marine. Unfortunately, the weather intervened yet again with the match called off on the Friday due to a frozen pitch. Following much warmer weather, the game was given the go-ahead the following Tuesday. After a goalless first half on a tough pitch, it was Marske who took the lead early in the second half when Adam Boyes latched on to a long ball and finished coolly. Marske doubled their in the Quarter Final, due to be played on 24 January.

A particular pleasing aspect of the season as a whole so far has been the outstanding scoring form of Guisborough striker Cole Kiernan, who up to and including the Heaton Stannington match had netted a total of 19 goals.

But the team as a whole has been playing attractive, attacking football which has been attracting crowds of between 200 and well over 300 on occasions and Guisborough have climbed from the bottom half of the table up to a very respectable fifth place.

The Priorymen will be hoping to climb even further by the end of the season especially now they are getting star players like skipper JJ Bartliff and winger Ben Jackson back from long term injury lay-offs.