Five-star Harrogate Railway at a 'huge disadvantage' after string of postponements

The Starbeck outfit thrashed Worsbrough Bridge Athletic 5-2 at Station View in what was their first NCEL Division One outing in four weeks following to a string of weather-enforced postponements.

Albert Ibrahimi and Luke Stewart braces, plus a Jack Lazenby goal secured a comfortable victory which keeps the Rail third in the table with three games in hand on second-placed Rossington Main.

And although his side sit just two points behind their promotion rivals, O’Connell believes that going almost a month without a game could well catch up with his players at the back end of the season.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare over the last month, having to prepare for games that you kind of knew weren’t going to be on,” he said.

“It has been frustrating for me and for the lads especially when the teams in and around us have been playing and winning. I know that we have games in hand but really you want points on the board.

“We’ve kept busy and trained whenever we can. The lads have been given programs and they’ve carried them out, so credit to them, they’ve kept themselves in good shape.

“But I do think it’s a huge disadvantage not to have had any fixtures during this period. Like I say, we have the games in hand but we’ve got to go and play them on a night towards the end of the season during a period where it’s already looking fairly tight and congested.

“Going to places like Dronfield and Swallownest on a Tuesday or a Wednesday night after the lads have been at work all day is far from ideal. But that’s what we’ve got to do, we’ve just got to suck it up and get on with it.”

As far as Saturday’s rout of Worsbrough Bridge is concerned, O’Connell was satisfied with what he saw from his players, if not completely happy.

“Performance-wise on Saturday we played well for periods but we were also sloppy during periods of the game,” he added. “We can definitely perform a lot better.

“If you take the goals out of it, with and without the ball we could definitely have done more.

“For 80 percent of the game, Worsbrough couldn’t get the ball off us, but we had a 10 to 15-minute period just after half-time that was shocking to say the least. If you play like that at any level you’ll get punished and I’ve said to the lads that it cannot happen again.

“But, to score five goals after such a long lay-off, I can’t really complain too much.”

Goals from Ibrahimi and Stewart handed Railway a 2-0 half-time lead, however the visitors struck twice in quick succession at the start of the second period to level matters.

Stewart and Ibrahimi then doubled their tallies for the afternoon to restore that two-goal cushion before Lazenby rounded things off with a thunderous free-kick.

“There were five well-worked goals by us, to be fair,” O’Connell continued.

"They came from attacking spaces that we were not attacking earlier in the season. Luke Stewart scored two headers and Albert scored one, which is what you want from your forwards, to be making those runs and getting on the end of things.

“We have highlighted areas of the box that we need to be attacking more and we saw that pay off on Saturday which was satisfying from my point of view.”

Next up for the Rail is a trip to Athersley Recreation this Saturday, 3pm kick-off.