THE WITTON COLUMN - By Paul Harper

IT was quite a weekend for Witton Albion.

Travelling up to South Shields, runaway leaders in the BetVictor Northern Premier League, we knew it was going to be a difficult game, but it was one we battled right until the end in and got our reward with a late 2-1 victory.

To go a goal behind on the stroke of half time was a bit of a blow, particularly after the efforts in the first 45 minutes. But, the lads kept going and played really well after the restart.

We had a goal disallowed, which I still can’t work out for why. Josh Wardle will be furious, as he still awaits his first competitive goal for the club. That should have been it.

But we kept going and going, and a sublime strike by Michael Monaghan drew us level late on. Certainly one to watch back on social media, if you haven’t already seen it.

The team weren’t just happy to take a point, though, and got a winner deep in injury time as Kyle Sambor showed his calm with a good finish inside the penalty area.

It’s a fantastic result and Albion have done the league double over South Shields this season, this on top of our excellent 3-1 win at Wincham Park earlier in the season. I don’t think many sides will be able to match that achievement as Shields have only lost three other games all season.

As I’ve been saying in recent weeks in this column, results can change very quickly. We’ve gone from a sticky patch to two wins in a row and were back in seventh position going into Monday night's game at Basford United, looking back up to those play-off positions to see if we can climb our way into them.

This weekend, we’re back on home turf with a fixture against Stafford Rangers at Wincham Park. Stafford have struggled this season but will be battling hard for points to try and stay in the division, so it won’t be an easy game.

But, with the confidence we can take from the past couple of weeks, hopefully we can continue the upward curve and edge ourselves closer to those top five spots. Look forward to seeing you there on Saturday. UTA!