We caught up with Manager Craig Rouse following a difficult afternoon yesterday, here’s what he had to say…
A tough day at the office, give us your overall reflection on the game?
I thought we started the game fairly well and put Tadcaster under a spell of pressure without threatening the goal too much. The game swung on two penalty decisions, one for each team which both technical areas agreed the referee had got wrong.
But I want to be clear in stating although it changed the course of the game we can do a lot better ourselves and we take full responsibility for the result. For the next 20 minutes of that half we showed a side to us that I haven’t seen at all this season and went into our shells, allowing the opposition too much time and space all over the pitch.
As the manager I take full responsibility for the result and apologise to any supporters who came to get behind the team today.
The first twenty five minutes were very even and the first goal changed the game, how disappointed were you in the response?
I was very disappointed with the final twenty minutes of the first half and we gifted them three goals which took the game away from us. All the goals are avoidable and as a group we must do better, but as stated I take full responsibility for it.
What would you put the performance down to?
After a testing week it would be easy to put it down to fatigue and tired legs, in hindsight I maybe should have made changes.
In defeat there’s no winning situation and if we’d made five or six changes and lost the game, people would then be asking why we’d disrupted a team that had performed so well in two games against Halifax.
It’s our performance as a group and we won’t be hiding away from it, we’ll take the criticism on the chin, dust ourselves down and move forward together. The players still have my full backing and I believe this group of players will start to get us up the table.
We now travel to Shildon next week, what can we expect from that game?
We’ll be looking for a reaction. In football teams get beat and teams play poorly, but it’s how you react that matters.
We’ll get in and train hard to put together a plan, that can help us turn the current situation around.