Simon Weaver 'delighted' with Harrogate Town's 'cracking start' to life in the EFL

The Wetherby Road outfit followed up their opening-day rout of Southend and last weekend’s draw at home to Walsall with a point on the road against a Port Vale side who are among the favourites for automatic promotion this term.

“I’m delighted. I’d have taken five points from the first three games any day of the week, particularly given the manner in which we’ve done it. It’s a cracking start,” Weaver said.

“Even though it wasn’t pretty at Port Vale, nor was it in the second 45 against Walsall last week, we’ve shown that we can’t half mix it, grit our teeth and show our stubborn nature, which you need.

“We have quality and we can play, but there’s no point just looking pretty away from home and getting beat 3-1, you need resilience as well.

“We weren’t anywhere near our best at Port Vale, but we’ve come away with a really good point, which makes in five in total from three tricky games, two of which have been away.”

The opening half hour of Saturday’s clash at Vale Park passed by without any incident of real note, Town seeing more of the ball while the Valiants looked like they could pose their visitors a few problems on the break.

Harrogate eventually managed to work a sight of goal on 36 minutes, courtesy of their first really incisive moment of attacking play.

Ryan Fallowfield raced down the right to meet Josh Falkingham’s clipped pass over the top, delivering a first-time cross from close to the byline that Aaron Martin glanced goalwards at the near post, drawing an excellent reaction save out of Scott Brown.

The second period followed a similar pattern initially, Town shading possession again before Vale built up a head of steam and started to exert some pressure.

And the hosts almost broke the deadlock after 64 minutes when Nathan Smith’s pull back from the right found David Worrall, who slid an effort against outside of the upright, though that was as close as either side would come to a goal.

Port Vale: Brown; Mills (Brisley 46), Legge, Smith, Fitzpatrick; Oyeleke, Joyce (Robinson 84), Conlon; Worrall, Cullen (McKirdy 65), Rodney. Unused substitutes: Crookes, Whitehead, Burgess, Visser.

Harrogate: Cracknell; Fallowfield, Smith, Hall, Burrell; Thomson, Falkingham, Kerry (Kirby 76), Kiernan (Walker 80); Martin, Beck (Stead 65). Unused substitutes: Jones, Lokko, Minter.

Referee: B Toner (Lancashire).