Connor Hall taking positives out of Harrogate Town stalemate

The Sulphurites made a fast start to their first-ever season in the EFL, but have gone off the boil somewhat in recent weeks.

And, they looked set to finish up empty-handed for the fourth time in five league matches, trailing as they did to Max Watters’s first-half strike with time running out at the EnviroVent Stadium.

Top-scorer Jack Muldoon would however rescue a well-deserved point with an 85th-minute goal, leaving centre-half Hall and his fellow team-mates with some positives to reflect upon.

”I think you’ve got to be pleased with a point in the end. We weren’t at the races in the first half, we came in a goal down and had it all to do, but we finished the game as the team in the ascendancy,” the 27-year-old said.

“A point after the difficult few games that we’ve had gets us back on the board. It is a big point for us from being 1-0 down.

“Ideally we’d have loved to have won that game but we didn’t play at all well in the first half and have managed to come back and get a point. We could maybe even have nicked all three.

“We can build on this result. It’s not a loss, so we’ll take the positives from it and move onto the next game. Hopefully we can push on now and get a few more wins and climb up the table.”

Hall and the rest of the Harrogate players had to take on Crawley without manager Simon Weaver in attendance.

The Town chief is currently in self-isolation as a Covid-19 precaution, meaning that assistant boss Paul Thirlwell took charge of proceedings at the weekend.

“Nothing really changed that much for me from what I would usually be doing, I just didn’t have the gaffer stood next to me, which I’m obviously used to,” Thirlwell said.

“That made things strange, but we were in constant dialogue during the game. We spoke about substitutions and various things like the change in formation and, as we generally do, we both kind of saw things in the same way.

“We just want the gaffer back as quick as possible and hopefully that’s sooner rather than later.”

Harrogate: Belshaw; Fallowfield, Lawlor, Hall, Burrell (Jones 76); Thomson, Falkingham, Kerry (Kirby 76), Walker (Martin 46); Muldoon, Kiernan. Unused substitutes: Cracknell, Beck, Stead.

Crawley: Nelson; Davies, McNerny, Craig, Doherty; Allarakhia (Dallison 78), Nichols, Powell, Hessenthaler; Watters (Frost 58), Nadesan. Unused substitutes: Morris, Adebowale, Sesay, Ashford, Galach.

Referee: M Coy (Durham).

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