Meakin Pleased With Win

Gary Meakin was delighted to see his side finally get a reward for their efforts as the Blues ran out 3-0 winners against North London rivals Hendon in the quarter finals of the London Senior Cup. The manager was keen to quickly move on from the weekend’s events and he felt that the players responded in the perfect way with a convincing win: “That’s where we have to do our talking now. What happened on Sunday happened and we can only rectify the image of the club by results on the football pitch. The team deserved it. They haven’t been getting what they deserve in their performances and that’s what we have been echoing inside, just keep doing what they are doing and the tide will turn. It’s nice to finally get their rewards for their hard work. “The difference today was being that bit more clinical. They haven’t done anything different tonight than any other game, bar a couple that we haven’t really performed in. The difference tonight is putting the ball in their net and keeping it out of ours.” There was speculation prior to the game that first-team players might be rested for Saturday’s crucial league clash at Bognor Regis but Gary named a strong squad and emphasised that he has ambitions of winning this competition: “ There are a lot of the first team guys who are going to be suspended now and we need to keep them ticking over so they are not out of the game too long whilst they are serving their bans and of course we really want to win the cup. But saying that we did have a couple of youth players in that team, Jack Hutchinson is 18, Spencer McCall is 17, the centre-half was only 20. The manager revealed that he had been particularly impressed by midfielder McCall, who is on a work experience loan from Stevenage FC: “Young Spencer filled in midfield brilliantly and I don’t want to big him up too much but he looks very good and he’s only 17-18. Andre Scarlett has been very impressive at right-back, he hasn’t made a bad decision just yet and Ryan Scott, the centre half, he hasn’t played in a few months and again was excellent. That said, everyone all round was good. The result and way we played will certainly give us confidence going into the game against Bognor on Saturday.” Hector Mackie, who scored Wingate’s second and set up Wayne O’Sullivan for the third, added that the result was what the team need and pinpointed the trip to Bognor as the key game as they battle to avoid the drop: “It was what we needed. It’s always good to get a goal and I thought we played good football tonight. We showed the level of professionalism that we needed and after losing on Sunday, we desperately needed to win a game and get some momentum going and that’s what we’ve done tonight. “I’m enjoying it at the club so far, everyone is welcoming and there’s a good group of players here, we just need to make sure we stay up. We really need to try and get three points against Bognor as we’ll have our best team to pick from. After that it’s going to be quite tough. It will be difficult but I know we’ll work hard and can deal with it.”