League have helped us out in keeper crisis

In the game at Kendal on Tuesday we were excellent for 80 minutes, but that only came after a poor first 10 minutes when they scored their winning goal.

It is vital that we start games well, that is something that I always mention in my team talk, but annoyingly that wasn’t the case.

You have to remember that we have had to bring in 18-year-old keeper Max Dearnley for the last two games, a young lad who is still learning about football.

A lot has been said on the internet about the situation with our under-21 keeper Rory Skelton and why he hasn’t played in our last two games.

Nobody at the club has anything derogatory to say about Rory, he is a great lad.

He informed the club that due to work commitments he was no longer able to play for the under-21s or the first team this season, so as far as we were concerned that was that.

Because of this we had to go out and sign a keeper on emergency loan.

We had a keeper lined up at Sunderland, he was an England under-18 keeper and he was keen to come down and play for us.

The league have their own criteria though, which states that emergency loan keepers must either come from the level below or they must be a young keeper from no higher than the Conference, who has not yet played men’s football.

I would like to thank the league for being fair to us because if they had said no to our appeal for an emergency loan then we wouldn’t have had a keeper.

I know people at Halifax Town and they said that Max met the criteria, was available and interested in coming in.

Fair play to the lad because he has stepped into the breach in two tough games.

I spoke to him after Saturday’s game and he accepted that he was at fault for their first goal, but that he is keen to learn from that.

We still have Matt Glennon in the background, he has been on holiday and he is having a hernia operation that he will shortly recover from.

At this stage of the season it is all about pushing on together as a team.

We have achieved what we set out to do, keep the club in the league.

Now we have the cup final that I, the lads and hopefully the fans are all looking forward to as well.