Same old story - 17/12/2003

The gaffer wants us to toughen up

We’re really disappointed with the cup exit and the draw with Rushden and Diamonds. It’s not that we’re playing poorly, but we simply don’t seem to get any luck when it comes to putting the ball in the back of the net. We really played Barnsley off the park in the first game last Saturday – the fact that it had to go to the replay at Oakwell was incredible, but it’s all about scoring and we simply didn’t do so.

It was much the same against Rushden, we played very well but went a goal down. Fortunately Lee Miller scored with a long range shot but we should have had more to show.

We felt confident about the Barnsley replay, in fact I can honestly say that we fear no one in this division. But although we didn’t play as well as we did in the home game, we should have gone through. Ant Kay got on the end of a good cross and scored with a decent header, and then they scored another from a dead ball situation. They had much the better of the play in the first hour, but we finished stronger. The fact that we came back into the game with a Christian Roberts goal just goes to show that we have the belief in ourselves, but we simply couldn’t find the equaliser and the Yorkshire club go into the third round.

The gaffer has told us that we have to toughen up. We do play open attractive football but he feels that there’s occasions when a more competitive spirit should be shown. If our matches were boxing fights, then the referee would have stopped the contest on a number of occasions. Now we’re looking for that extra edge of competitiveness and we’ll see where that can take us.

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