MANAGER NOTES

MICHAEL DUNWELL

WELCOME TO THE MAP GROUP UK STADIUM FOR TONIGHT’S NORTHERN LEAGUE DIVISION ONE MATCH AGAINST SEAHAM RED STAR

I’d like to start off my notes by welcoming the players, staff and committee of Seaham Red Star and a warm welcome to all of our supporters for tonight’s Northern League Division One match.

We’ve had a few training sessions, so the lads are fresh going into this. The game on Saturday, away at Penrith, was called off at the last minute, so it was a bit disappointing because we prepared and we had three good results against three of the better teams in the league. We are full of confidence and were disappointed we didn’t get to play, but it allowed us to work on things and gave people who had knocks, like Franksy who wouldn’t have been ready for Penrith, a chance to recover. The postponements at this time of year affects your rhythm. I think we’Ve picked up 13 out of the last 15 points available, so we’re on a good unbeaten run. It affects the rhythm a little bit when you’re on a run, but you’ve got to get on with it. It’s a good opportunity, against Seaham, to get three points and keep the run going. Looking at results of teams around us is something you do look at, but we’ve got to go out and do our business on the pitch. We’ll always take each game as it comes and we go into every game wanting to win, so if we do our job the rest will sort itself out. Our last home game was against Consett and the way they play is quite difficult with the diamond in the midfield. We were struggling to cope with it in the first-half and we were lucky not to be 3-1 or 4-1 down at half-time. We had a few words with the players at half-time, we changed the shape of the team stockton_townfc

“SEAHAM ARE A BIT OF A BOGEY TEAM FOR US. I’VE WATCHED HIGHLIGHTS AND HAD REPORTS THAT THEY’VE BEEN PLAYING WELL.”

and in the second-half, it was the complete opposite. We put our chances away and probably could’ve won by more in the end, it was convincing. Then we went to Shildon and in difficult conditions, in the end, I was happy to come away with a point. They probably had the more clear-cut chances in the game, but overall, it was a fairly even game and we had a lot more possession than what they did. They were a bit more direct, we couldn’t break them down and they defended well. We said before the game that it felt a strange one. Last year there were 800 fans there, people coming out of the bar all the time and you could feel it was a big game with the atmosphere in the ground. But this time, it’s the first time this season, where we’ve gone somewhere and it didn’t really feel like a game. There wasn’t a lot of fans and we took 200 fans there last year. The players were disappointed not to win, but seven points from those three games is good. I don’t like to talk about the ground restrictions a lot, but I don’t think it’s a fair playing field at the moment. Thornaby can have 300 fans in their ground against Ashington for example, but on the flip side, Ashington can only have 150 fans at home to Thornaby. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.