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Riley Report - January 2022

Submitted by Colin Wilson on Wednesday, 19 January 2022

Good Afternoon

It been a long time since my last report and seems as if we haven’t played for at least a month, and they say a week is long time in football.

Unfortunately last week’s game had to be postponed due to a big outbreak in the squad with Covid including myself and members of coaching staff. We have been quite lucky that in the past it has just been a single individual that has caught it and we have still managed to field a side, but even if we had called up the youth players signed on we would have struggled to get 11 players on the pitch last week.

Thankfully most of our squad will now have had Covid so we are hoping that we have no more disruptions to our season because of it.

Since my last report we have put together a decent run of form in winning 4 and drawing one, against a good North Shields side, and also keeping clean sheets in all those games which is a massive credit to players We have worked hard in training to be able to look more solid and give ourselves a platform to build wins on and this is something we must look to keep going.

Ashington visit us today who probably gave us one of our toughest games this season to date away from home. I’m hoping the extended break hasn’t disrupted our rhythm and we can build on our last few games and carry our unbeaten run on. This will be hard to judge as although the lads have had some fitness training I’m not sure how much the virus can effect players performance so its something we as coaching staff have to be careful of.

Nonetheless I expect us to perform a lot better in the second half of the season and hope to finish as strong as possible.

We welcome a new face in Michael Hoganson who is a fantastic player and one of my Ex Bishop Auckland players who has played football league for Newcastle and Derby County and I’m sure he will show his qualities in the weeks ahead. I’m also hopeful of bringing in an old crowd favourite in the next week or two which will create great competition in our squad.