Hall Road Rangers suffered their second straight defeat on Saturday, leaving them in the bottom four of the Northern Counties East League.Hall Road Rangers joint boss, Jamie Barnwell, has rued his side’s 2-0 home defeat to Thackley, claiming that his players weren’t switched on enough. Barnwell saw his side concede two second half goals to hand the visitors the victory, and said that it was an uncharacteristically lethargic effort from his players.
“I can always accept it if teams are better than us, but we’ve been beaten today because we haven’t applied ourselves”, he said. “Since me and Martin arrived, we said first and foremost that in this league you’ve got to compete, and then we should have enough ability in the changing room to win games, but we haven’t competed today. We were flat from the start, and that comes from the tempo. Yes, the pitch was difficult, but nobody can stop you from running about and getting in their faces. We haven’t done that from minutes one to minute 90.”
Hall Road have been noticeably more confident since the arrival of Barnwell and co-manager Martin Thacker back in January, and have been unlucky not to take more points home in many games. But the team were disappointing against what was an average Thackley side, who took the lead on 57 minutes through Liam Moore, and doubled their tally on 72 minutes through Brice Tiani. Rangers recorded less than a handful of goal-bound efforts in the game, to add to the miserable afternoon. Today’s performance against Thackley, though, Barnwell hoped, was not something that was going to be repeated, especially with two tough home fixtures against Winterton (Tuesday) and Scarborough (Saturday) on the horizon.
“But today is a tough one to take”, said the Rangers boss. “I told the lads that it’s a game that has passed them by and not one of them can go home and say they’ve contributed. I’ve left them in the changing room stewing, so hopefully they’ll reflect on this themselves. Once they cross the white line, it’s down to them. Hopefully they have enough self pride to come back on Tuesday knowing that today wasn’t good enough for Hall Road Rangers.”
Rangers face Winterton at Dene Park on Tuesday night. Kick-off is 7.45pm.
HALL ROAD: Mike Burley, Jamie Heard, Liam Cattermole, Steve Gawthorpe, Michael Gregory, Jamie Atkinson, Mark Griffin, Joe Cooper, Steve Graham (Danny Ricketts, 63), Paul Wilson (Jordan Easter, 63), Adam Crane. Subs not used: Dane Mortimer, Luke Wheeldon.
Many thanks, as ever, to Alex Blackburne, Hall Road’s Press Officer, for this match report. All the relevant links are below.
March 13, 2012
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