Pre-season Friendly
Turnbull Ground, Upgang Lane, Whitby
Saturday, 13th August 2005, 3.00pm
Defeat at windy Whitby
Gresley Rovers finished their pre-season programme with a defeat at blustery Whitby.
Two late goals from the home side gave a scoreline that Gresley did not deserve as they had the upper hand for long periods of the second half.
Whitby Town were soon into their stride adapting best to the windy conditions that made things difficult for both sides and it needed some fine determined defending from their visitors to hold them back.
However, on 34 minutes they broke through when a Matt Millns pass was cut out by Craig Veart who in turn put through a fine pass to Paul Atkinson. Atkinson's cross was met by Tom Raw who scored at the second attempt after being denied by Andy Simpson's block.
Gresley were unlucky not to have been back on terms just minutes later when Millns was brought down in the area by Danny Farthing but the referee ignored the appeals.
With just 4 minutes remaining of the first half David Holmes went close when he capitalised on a miss-kick from The Seasiders' keeper Ben Escritt but the first time shot just clipped the top of the bar.
Manager Gary Norton made a change at the start of the second period when he replaced Chris Gray with Tony Brown and pushed Simpson forward into midfield alongside Carl Slater.
The move seemed to have some effect because Gresley began to take a hold of the game and again went close to levelling on 50 minutes but Aaron O'Connor was unfortunate to see his shot go just past an upright.
Four minutes later after Nathan Tate had made a fine run the ball found O'Connor who brought out a fine save from Escritt firing a vicious 20 yard shot that the keeper did well to deal with.
Escritt kept his side's advantage on the hour acrobatically tipping over Slater's goal bound lob.
Gresley keeper Gavin Saxby was called into action on 67 minutes denying Raw and the ball went down the other end where substitute Chris White was prevented getting on the score sheet by Escritt.
On 70 minutes the home side doubled their advantage when Nick Scaiife beat an offside trap before slotting the ball home.
Four minutes later substitute Emeka Ejiofor had a goal disallowed and then minutes later put a good shot from 30 yards just over the bar.
Another Gresley substitute Danny Tyers was then unlucky when Veart cleared his shot off the line.
Some slack defending then gave Whitby their third goal on 81 minutes when David McTiernan was allowed to head home unmarked at the far post from Veart's corner.
Gresley got their just reward for their endeavours on 86 minutes when Mickey Lyons, Ejiofor combined well with Chris White to enable White to smash the ball home.
Whitby had the final say, however, deep in time added on when Dave Wells fired a long range shot that found the target via a post.
Manager's View
"The extreme windy conditions caused us problems in the first half and we struggled to get into the game and get the ball down.
"Whitby played some great stuff at times but despite that we dug in well and looked quite solid defensively.
"Having said that, I was disappointed that we lost our shape for the first goal, especially having worked on it a lot in training in the last week.
"On the flip side we were excellent offensively in the second half and I felt we deserved more than we got. But, conceding sloppy goals like we did needs to be addressed quickly. We still have some work to do in training defensively but overall we are not a million miles away."
