PAUL Carden says the decision to name Whitby Town keeper Shane Bland as man of the match is a demonstration of how much his Warrington Town side deserved their victory on the Yorkshire coast.
Tony Gray’s second-half winner was enough to secure Yellows’ first league win in over a month and lift them to the fringes of the BetVictor Northern Premier Division play-off spots.
> PHOTO GALLERY: Yellows' productive day at the seaside in pictures
Bland made several saves to frustrate Yellows and it looked like extending their winless run to five matches before Gray’s intervention, while opposite number Tony McMillan remained largely unemployed at the other end.
Yellows boss Carden was delighted with how his side dealt with Whitby’s physical threat to record a clean sheet.
“Tony hasn’t had a save to make and their keeper got man of the match, which shows how the game was,” he said.
“We saw the aspects of our game that I know we have – good, controlled football in the first half and resilience and determination in the second half.
“We started a bit scrappy and encouraged them. They’re a big side – they had three centre halves, a big midfielder, two big strikers and two good-sized wing-backs.
“They used their physicality and we didn’t move the ball well in the first 10 minutes.
“Once we got a foothold in the game, they didn’t really have any chances.
“They had set-pieces where naturally because of their size, they are going to put you under pressure but we defended it well.
“We could have gone in at half time two or three goals up and that would have gone a long way to the game being done and we deserved it.
“We didn’t want half time to come because we were playing well, on top and created chances.
“We’ve hit the bar, the keeper has made a great save from Bohan Dixon and we’ve had another great chance from Ben Garrity. We were thinking it was going to be one of those days again.
“The second half was a different game – we had to make good use of the ball as we were going up a bit of a slope.
“We changed it up a little bit by bringing Tony on and it paid off.”
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