Jarrett airs concerns over ‘tired performance’

The First Team boss offered his thoughts on the Steelmen's final pre-season affair.

A rather bitter-sweet end to pre-season, Carl Jarrett aired his frustrations over the Steelmen’s ‘tired performance,’ despite his side winning the inaugural Steel and Iron Cup in a penalty shootout.

Redcar Athletic threw away a two-goal lead to see the tie come down to spot kicks, clinching the trophy with a flawless record, as Josh Mazfari clawed out a decisive save.

First trailing through a sensational strike, an Adam Boyes double and club first goal from Nathan Guru put Redcar on track to take the title by the halfway mark.

Two defensive mistakes punished by Holker saw the bout back to level pegging on the hour mark, Adam Boyes’ late third cancelled out even later still to force a penalty shootout.

Despite a flawless quartet of dispatched spot kicks clinching the Steel and Iron Cup for Redcar Athletic, First Team boss Carl Jarrett was left deeply unhappy over the performance of his squad, with just a week to go before the visit of Kendal Town.

“It was one of those ‘last games’ of pre-season.” The boss said.

“I won’t make any excuses, but looking at all of those other games that we’ve played, I don’t think we dominated the ball enough in the first half.

“We conceded four sloppy goals at home. That’s not brilliant.

“We had chance after chance to put the game to bed, but it just looked like a tired performance.”

PRE-SEASON

See fixtures and results from the Steelmen’s pre-season campaign.

“The result, obviously, is for the Steel and Iron Cup.” Jarrett continued. “You want to win it for the club, and for the area.”

“When you look at the actual game, I thought we got more out of the Thornaby game as a management team, and the way that we played against them, than looking at that there.

“We had to scratch a team together yet again, with trialists coming in.

“We just weren’t at it at all from minute one. As I said, on the possession side of things, we didn’t have the ball as much as we would’ve wanted, we made too many mistakes.

“We got caught a couple of times on transition with the ball too.”

On the bigger picture, Carl Jarrett admitted his concern came from next Saturday’s Northern League opener against Kendal Town, perhaps the toughest match of the season as early as the curtain-raiser.

He said: “A win is a win, basically, and now we have to move on to next week.”

“We’ve got to try and get some bodies back together, on the fitness side of things. We’ve got a big week coming up, with training on Tuesday and Thursday.

“Now it’s all about next Saturday.”