THE WITTON COLUMN - By Paul Harper

AFTER a few weeks of frustration and disappointment, Witton Albion finally got back to winning ways at the weekend with a 2-1 victory over Atherton Collieries.

When you’re going through a bit of a sticky patch, as we were, you just need to dig out a victory, no matter how, and the lads did just that on Saturday.

It certainly wasn’t the prettiest of performances, but the team did what they needed to get over the line and back to winning ways and now, hopefully, we can turn the recent form around and go on a little unbeaten run to climb the league table once more.

The performance, while not pretty, summed up perfectly the great spirit amongst this group of players.

After dominating the early stages, we went a goal behind against the run of play. But the lads showed great character to get back into the game before half time, and then, straight after the half time interval, put themselves ahead.

The two goals were fantastic. Danny Mitchley showing expert composure and clinical finishing for the first, while the move for Will Jones’ second was superb with a clinical finish to round it off.

Yes, there were some hairy moments in the second half.

Atherton hit the post and there was a goalmouth scramble, but that just showed the massive desire of the Albion players to keep the ball out of the goal. Bodies on the line, we were going to get that three points and they achieved just that.

Hopefully, the victory will boost the lads and give the confidence to kick on again and see if we can challenge for a top five spot come the end of the season.

We had been up there within touching distance before this difficult spell of results. If we can put another decent run together, there’s no reason why we can’t get ourselves back amongst the battle for a play-off position.

All in all, it was a good weekend for the club, with the Under-21 development squad also winning with a 4-3 victory over City of Liverpool.

Our new management team have collected two wins from their first two matches in charge, so long may that continue.

The first team head to league leaders South Shields this coming Saturday. A difficult game, no doubt, but with the confidence of a win last weekend, hopefully it’s a game we can get something out of.

After all, we defeated them 3-1 in the reverse fixture here at Wincham Park earlier in the season. Let’s do it again, lads!