Match Report

“We were not good enough at the top end of pitch” says Town boss Nathan

Dunston UTS 1, Guisborough Town 0

(Northern Premier League Division One East)

Guisborough Town Manager Nathan Haslam expressed deep disappointment. as his side were beaten by the only goal at Dunston on Tuesday night.

To the Priorymen’s credit, they hung on stoically right to the end after conceding a 54th minute goal when overlapping Dunston left back Dan Stephenson’s rocket of a shot flew like an arrow into the far corner of the Guisborough net.

Guisborough had come within a whisker of taking a 22nd minute with excellent work by Fin Rose as he threaded a great ball through to Sam Collins who’s rasping shot grazed just past the fsr post.

There was an ugly end to the game on 88 minutes when Dunston’s Devitt was shown a straight red card for a terrible touchline tackle on Elliott Beddow who was in full flight along the right wing.

As a result of this narrow defeat. Guisborough have slipped to just two places above the relegation play-off spots. But had the Priorymen won – they could have catapulted themselves into or around the top four. Such is the early season ‘what if’ scenarios that are rife at the start of any season.

In the dying seconds of the Dunston game the Priorymen almost snatched an equaliser when striker Connor Simpson challenged the Dunston ‘keeper for a piercing cross to the far post and although he managed to get his shot away the ball appeared to strike the ‘keeper and then hit the bar and ricochet behind to safety.

After the game a clearly disappointed Guisborough Manager Nathan Haslam said: “We’ve huffed and puffed tonight but the really frustrating aspect for me is that we’ve been schooled in every department.

“We’ve come up against a really experienced side in Dunston who run hard and are aggressive non-stop both with the ball and without it.

“We just didn’t have any answers to them tonight and that’s the really disappointing thing for me.

“There’s no excuses from us – I hate to say it but the best team won on the night.”

Nathan acknowledged the good defensive efforts of the team at the back – but he highlighted once again the attacking deficiencies of his side.

“We need an outlet and we need to be better up top as we’ve been saying for quite a number of weeks now and it’s so frustrating for me that it’s just not clicking for us up front.

“So we need to look seriously at this and go back to the drawing board.

Nathan bemoaned the growing list of injuries to the side which is keeping four or five senior players on the sidelines.

And just to literally add insult to injury winger Toluwani Osiyemi came on in the 65th minute but within just 12 minutes he had to leave the field with what looked like a recurrence of his shoulder injury.

Also Josh Macdonald had to go off injured early on as Guisborough’s casualty list continues to grow unabated.

On the plus side striker Matty Willshaw is available again after his three-match suspension for the away league match at improving Silsden this coming Saturday.

Guisborough’s next game is this coming Saturday, 3 October (KO 3pm) in the league at Silsden. A team coach is going to Silsden with room for supporters (£20 fare).

Report by Bill Perfitt.