Boss hails ‘outstanding’ performance as Town clinch vital league win

Sat. 7th Dec. Southern League Div. One

Barnstaple Town 1 Melksham Town 3

Tues. 3rd Dec. Wilts. Senior Cup Quarter-final 

Salisbury 3 Melksham Town 1

MELKSHAM Town FC’s manager, Richard Fey, has praised the recent performance of his squad,  which have been hailed as ‘outstanding’. 

After a 3-1 win last weekend against Barnstaple Town, the club has extended its unbeaten Southern League run to four games, and has moved up the league into 16th place – and manager Richard has hopes that the club’s ‘rough times’ are now behind them.

About the season so far, Richard told Melksham News, “I am proud of the team – it has been so hard. Taking on the club seven months ago I only had one player. And since then I’ve been trying to get a competitive side together to match what the club has done previously – it has been successful for the last 10 years – the club is used to winning matches. 

“But when you start the season with one player at this level of football it’s going to be tough. It was always going to take some time, maybe a year or two to get a competitive side to challenge at the top. 

“But we are making the right strides, on and off the pitch. When you look at the lads we are enticing to the club now, the club should be proud. Hopefully the rough times are behind us and we can stay positive and look forward.”

This fortnight Town faced Salisbury in the quarter-finals of the Wiltshire Senior Cup. But despite a valiant effort and a ‘outstanding’ performance, Town fell 3-1 to the higher-ranking team.

Richard said, “We were playing a team in the league above us, and they are sat around the play-offs, and they played their first team – so we knew it was going to be tough.

“And unfortunately we were up against it as we  didn’t have a goalkeeper up until 2pm that afternoon – Jamie Bartlett was still out of action after being carried off against Larkhall. So we brought in Seb Tylek, who has been training well with us. Harry Rutty was cup-tied, Chris Allen and Matt Hurley were off injured – so we were going in there with bare bones – but the lads were outstanding!

“We pulled it back to one-all with a goal from Phil Ormrod with about 10 minutes to go, but unfortunately the same referee who we had for the Larkhall match, who made mistakes, missed a blatant foul before the second goal – everyone stopped and Salisbury broke through and scored.

“The third goal was in injury time, when we were pressing on to get an equaliser. But I was really proud of the lads, they were excellent. And we got minutes into lads who haven’t been playing as much, like Sayeed Ibrahim, Sol Pryce and Phil Ormrod.”

Next up for Town was bottom of the league Barnstaple Town, but the squad refused to rest on their laurels, and another ‘excellent’ performance saw the club grab a crucial three-points with a 3-1 win.

“We knew it was going to be tough,” said Richard, “we were going down there unbeaten in the last three games and Barnstaple are bottom of the league – but they are signing two or three new players every week. The pitch was a leveller, it was really heavy – it was a pudding really. And again we had to make a few changes to the squad – Phil Ormrod was suspended. But we stayed focussed and resolved to just go in and get a result.

“And it worked in our favour, Joe Romanski scored from a corner after about 10 minutes. And Luke Ballinger was outstanding, scoring two goals – he scored a great free kick and wrapped the game up with about five minutes to go.

“The lads were excellent, and they have been excellent since what happened against Moneyfields (Town lost 6-4, conceding five goals in less than 15 second-half minutes after leading 4-1 at half time). The last six games, the boys have been superb. We’ve made about five or six signings, and since those boys came in we’ve got a completely different team compared to the one we started with at the beginning of the season. 

“It’s now all about just settling it down, sticking with the lads and hopefully climbing the table. But after performances like the one on Saturday (7th December), where we were excellent, hopefully this is the kick start to our season that we needed.”