NCEL: Knaresborough Town find their feet in front of goal

Knaresborough Town striker Colin Heath’s first goals since November helped his side to a 3-0 win away at Hemsworth Miners Welfare on Saturday.
Knaresborough TownKnaresborough Town
Knaresborough Town

The experienced striker has suffered from a stop-start season with injuries and suspensions limiting his appearances for Brian Davey’s side in NECL Division One.

Heath looked to be putting his early season injuries behind him with five goals in three games in November but a straight red card at Shirebrook Town caused further disruption.

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Despite Brad Walker and Mitch Hamilton taking on the mantle and chipping in with important strikes, Davey’s side have struggled for goals in recent weeks.

But with Heath finding his feet in front of goal again and Walker’s first since his hat-trick at Hallam in January, Davey is confident his team can push on in the remainder of the season.

He said: “We said all along that we need to keep it tight but we were missing that sharpness but I’ve always said when Colin is sharp he’s very good.

“We did well keeping them to nothing so it was just a case of can we take our chances but we’ve come away from the game thinking they were no better than us and we deserved the three points.

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“It was an all around good performance, we defended as a team and we have been really tight in the last couple of games and we thought we could do it.

“It’s one of those things that if the season had started now we would have really fancied ourselves in this league.”

With his strikers rediscovering their sharpness and a defence that has kept four clean sheets in their last six games, Davey will be confident of a positive performance against Louth Town on Saturday.

The game against Louth will be Knaresborough’s sixth game in seven against teams from the top nine in the division but Davey believes that the big games ‘can’t come quick enough’.

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He said: “We are very strong and we have got our best players at the club still missing. Louth are on a good run at the moment and the big games seem to be coming every week. But we want these hard games to show how good we can be.

“We are still managing to give a run out to these reserve players, making them stronger and when the midweek games come back in a couple of weeks I’m always going to have people missing.

“If anyone is missing a game through work it’s going to be very hard to get back in the team now but it does give us the chance to look at other players.”