'Game of thirds' - Morpeth Town boss Craig Lynch reacts to friendly defeat against Gateshead U19s

Morpeth Town boss Craig Lynch has delivered his verdict on his side’s 3-2 friendly defeat at the hands of Gateshead U19s on Friday evening.

The Highwaymen found themselves 2-0 up inside 16 minutes at Craik Park courtesy of goals from Louis Burns and Jarret Rivers, but would go on to relinquish their lead after playing the final half hour of the contest with 10 men and a side largely comprised of academy talents.

Reflecting on the match after the final whistle, Lynch said: “[It was a] Game of thirds, really. We wanted to get 70 minutes out of the lads. We got about 65 I think, and we had a couple struggling with knocks, which was disappointing and that was the one disappointment of the night.

“Tonight we were looking at something different. We obviously were lacking Joel [Holvey] and Millsy [Liam Miller] who both weren't available for the night, so Mitch [Hancox] went left-back, but we tried to go into the start of the game as if we were 1-0 down at home. That's the way we tried to look at it. We were just trying to get the ball quickly on the regains from their half, which I thought took about 20 minutes to do, and we were looking to try and overload their midfield area to try and keep the ball, and that's where the second goal has come from.”

He continued: “We've got to try and get our lads up to speed, and we've got to look at different things. The way the fixtures have come out for us in preseason, it’s allowed us to do that, so we'll have tonight and we've got Wednesday [against Hartlepool United U21s] for fitness, and then we've got a really hard game against Redcar to finish off pre-season, but all in all, it was brilliant to see the young lads up close in the game. It was a great night, and like I said for 65 minutes, that was what we're looking for - another clean sheet, we've created chances, and we've also scored two good goals.”