Skelmersdale United manager Richard Brodie reacted to their “dreadful” Witton Albion defeat as he opens up about some of the issues facing the club.
It’s been a positive season for the Blues in their first season back in the Northern Premier League West. The situation has been far from ideal as they had to switch to Burscough FC’s The Community Ground at the eleventh hour.
Their former home, JMO Sports Park, failed to live up to the grading set by the Football Association and they were forced to groundshare with the North West Counties side for the 2022/23 season.
On Saturday, they conceded five against Witton Albion as they suffered a 5-3 defeat. Speaking on the loss, Brodie told Off The Park: “I thought we were dreadful, I thought it was the worst 45 minutes of football we’ve put in since January 7 against City of Liverpool. On the flip side to that, since then we were fantastic for two months.
“The performance on Saturday summed up the football club up at the moment on and off the pitch, flat and deflated, that was the performance and that is it off the pitch. I’ll back the lads, they’ve been tremendous and everyone puts in a bad performance across the season but when everyone puts one in together it’s not good.
“Having said that, I thought Witton were excellent, the front lads with the interchange, link of play, they were better than us. Scoring three goals in the second is great and give the reaction we wanted but we never looked like getting anything from the game.
“It’s not ideal, we’ve come into a season where it’s our first in this division – my first as a manager – I believe we’ve coped very well as a whole through lots of distractions, lots of difficult circumstances and we’ve built a good that Mouse [Michael Smith], Jack Hot and myself are really proud of,” he continued, describing the situation facing Skem.
“But ultimately, we don’t have a home – we’re groundsharing with Burscough, we have to thank them for that – at the same time it’s not ideal all around the position we find ourselves in. Groundsharing costs money, it’s not ideal for supporters to get there, altogether it’s very frustrating. We’ve coped with it but just hope we have a solution in the coming weeks.”
Despite the frustration, Brodie has set out the stall for the remainder of the season as they host Hanley Town before travelling to the DCBL Stadium to face Widnes on Monday.
“Our squad is very, very good and we will always score goals or create chances,” he added.
“We’ve had a couple of poor results and now we’re looking to move forward in the next four games, we’re not going down and we’re not going up, let’s finish the season on a high.
“Let’s get as many points as we can, it’s a big weekend coming up where I think we can get six points then you move into the last two games and see where you go. Let’s get as many points as we can and finish as high as we can.
“They had a good result last weekend but we have to show a reaction, that’s how simple it is. We have to be better than we were last week, we know that, we’re at home, we need to go back to how we were for 74 minutes against Macclesfield. For the last 15 minutes with nine men and the first 45 against Witton was not the standards we’ve set. We’ve trained hard this week, there’s always a chance to put it right.”
[Featured image: Gordon Johnson]
