The Witton Albion Column by Paul Harper

 

THE busy festive period is over and, unfortunately, Witton Albion didn’t pick up as many points as we had wanted.

After a nice little run of unbeaten matches was ended at Radcliffe on December 14, we’ve only picked up a solitary point which is frustrating.

The Christmas period was a tough one. An away trip to Warrington Town is always difficult against one of the sides who will be challenging for a promotion place coming the end of the season.

We fell behind but showed excellent spirit to fight back and equalise almost immediately and claim a good draw at Cantilever Park.

Then on New Year’s Day, Nantwich Town visited Wincham Park. Again, they will be up there at the end of the campaign, so it was a tricky game.

It was made more difficult by the fact that key players Josh Wardle and Liam Goulding were missing, but Albion led for a long time.

Nick Ryan has recently returned to the club, and performed admirably on his return to the side on that day, especially after so little competitive football after a serious injury sustained in his last spell with us some 20 months earlier.

The defence was really organised, but the two times that the Dabbers managed to manoeuvre the rearguard out of position, they scored two goals to take a late win.

Last Saturday, we were beaten by 10-man Buxton. We couldn’t break them down and they counter attacked clinically to take the three points.

It has been a frustrating period. As I have mentioned, injuries have not helped our cause, but we’d certainly have hoped to have picked up a few more points than we have over this last few weeks.

Prior to this, we’d been on a good run of results that had put us within touching distance of the play-off positions.

And, despite our recent results, we’re still not a million miles behind those places in the BetVictor Northern Premier League, so it’s important to keep going.

We put together a good run to get into that position, and we need to put another similar run to get back to where we were. We’ve done it before, there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.

The squad is full of heart, grit and determination, and they want to succeed. They’ll be as disappointed as anyone about the recent results and will be wanting to turn it around.

With some rearranged games coming up in January, it’s a busy month, and if we can pick up a few wins in the next few weeks, we’ll be right back up there once again.