Paul Holleran gave his thoughts on our final league match of the season shortly after the final whistle………..
‘I thought it was a good start to the game, the first twenty minutes had a good flow to it, there were chances at both ends, but in the second part of the first half Darlington just took over. They play very narrow and our back four got caught not stepping on to players, we got a bit deep in midfield, and to be fair the goal was coming. We changed our shape and changed the system a little bit at the start of the second half to make sure we pushed on in midfield, we were a bit narrow and pushed forward and I thought it was a great game second half, a really open game, and we thoroughly deserved the goal, yet again a really good goal.
‘I just wanted to make sure that we finished this last game of the season with the same kind of intent that we’ve shown in the last six weeks. It’s great that we’ve finished unbeaten in April, yet again we’ve come from behind again and shown lots of character. There were lots of good individual performances and Colby getting another goal, so there was lots of real plusses today. Obviously we got one or two players off with the Senior Cup in mind. We didn’t play Ahmed, Connor Gudger’s got a bit of a sore chest and pains and we didn’t want to risk anything so we’ve been able to rest one or two, get some minutes into one or two players, and take it from there. It was a good day for us.
‘We wanted to improve on last year and we’ve done that. It’s as high as we’ve done in the past and the key thing now is to retain the players we want to retain and add some to it and go again because we know how competitive this league is and will be again next season. When you look at the pack of teams we’ve finished in and around and the clubs we’ve finished above I think it’s a really big compliment to the dressing room, and we’re delighted.
‘Thursday, player wise - obviously again, we’ve managed that a little bit today. We managed to get an hour out of Jamie Hood and get him off and we got Joe Clarke off and with Ahmed and Connor we had an eye on that. There’s one or two players who were with us earlier on this season that will come back into the squad as well, so that’s how we’ll manage it, and young Connor Carson will be in the squad as well.’
