Welcome to Ricky Marheineke, all of his staff and the supporters and officials of St Ives.
Fact of the matter is that if our game plan was to keep possession for as long as possible, we would have good days when we would execute it very well, and bad days when we lose lots of games as players give the ball away - normally in bad areas.
We’ve had a tough few weeks with injury and unavailability and that has inevitably affected our performance levels. No team can function with 7, 8, 9 and even 10 senior players missing at once and they are the circumstances we have had to deal with over the last few weeks. It wasn’t surprising to me that as soon as we had a few back, we scored 5 away from home to keep us as the top scoring team in the league - and it wasn’t a surprise to see that all of a sudden ‘we had changed tactics’ in some peoples eyes!!! Fact of the matter is our game plan remains the same as it always has. When it works well people see a cutting, counter attacking display full of quality. When it doesn’t, we are guilty of playing too direct.
In either style we have a team of humans, all of which need to be functioning together at a similar level. When some aren’t, quality is undoubtedly affected (and that is made harder with lots of very good quality players missing). Saturday saw a much more experienced line up take to the pitch, (we only had 6 players missing!),
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but included Lee Clarke (pictured) playing despite an imminent operation and Josh Beech making only his second start of the season. Both were instrumental in a team performance that was similar to the ones we have had over he last few weeks, but the final ball and finish had a bit more quality so it is viewed in a completely different light to some of the others. We still have things to work on, and we are aware that we need to be firing on all cylinders from Christmas onwards after giving ourselves a chance by being up there. That will be helped with Mitchell-King, Drew Roberts (pictured opposite) and Remy Gordon (pictured opposite) all returning toward the end of this month or early November. We’ve missed them and a fit Lee Clarke all season, but lets not take away anything from the other players who have been digging out results and putting their health on the line in some cases, to ensure we don’t suffer as much as other teams will do when they have similar problems. Batchy