Ashington boss Marc Ellison reflects on long-awaited first league win

Ashington manager Marc Ellison expressed his delight after watching his side record their first league victory of the season on Tuesday night when they beat high-flying Garforth Town 2-1 at Woodhorn Lane.

Speaking after the final whistle, the Colliers boss said: “It feels like that first win has been a long time coming. We’ve been so close a few times without quite getting over the line, so I’m really pleased to finally get the three points. For the first half an hour or so, I thought we were brilliant. We really took the game to them, played some really good football and the goal was a fantastic move, finished off really well by Bry [Taylor].”

He continued: “At half-time we said they [Garforth] would have to change something. We expected them to come out and step on us a lot more, and to be fair to them, they did that and started to grow into the game. But we managed to get up the other end and win a penalty, which Scotty [Fenwick] finished really well.

“If I’m being picky, I think we could have kicked on again in the second half and continued where we left off in the first. We sat off them a little bit too early, invited pressure onto ourselves and eventually they pull one back and you’re thinking, here we go again. Thankfully, this time we’ve managed to see it through, get our first three points and finally get that monkey off our backs. I asked the lads to build on the positives from Saturday and they’ve done that, and then some more, so I’m really happy.”

He went on: “There’s still plenty we can be better at, as there always will be, but this is another really solid platform for us to build from. Most importantly, we’ve finally got the win. Hopefully that gives the lads a good bit of confidence and belief going into what is going to be a tough run of four or five away games on the bounce. We’ve earned the three points, now we need to make sure we use them properly and keep building.”