Youth boss Mark Birch gave us his reaction to last week’s opening day win over Wrexham.
“I think it was a game that rounded off what was a tough pre-season,” he said. “The pre-season games highlighted a lot of things and raised a lot of questions, and we took that into the game at the weekend.
“We have to be honest and say that we’ll play teams that are a little bit more prepared for our league in the coming weeks, but it was a great way to kick the season off.
“As we saw through July scoring goals was a bit of a problem for us, so it was good to see that, but even more pleasing was the clean sheet.
“We’d conceded a lot of goals so in the week leading up to Saturday we worked on the defensive side of it. The lads took it on board and I have to say that the two centre halves were fantastic.
“Getting a result like that should give them a little bit of belief. Along with the staff, we’ve all been telling the lads that we deliberately made the pre-season programme tough, because we knew it was going to stand them in good stead for the season.
“At times when you’re on the end of a heavy defeat, which happened to us, you can start to lose a bit of the belief you have in what you’re doing.
“Putting in a performance like this lets them see why we made the pre-season programme as hard as it was, and maybe now they’ll be seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
“It’s always a tough one this,” he agreed. “It’s a long journey, stuck on a mini bus, but over the years we’ve worked out the best way of doing it.
“We know where and when to stop and distance is never an excuse, we have to go there and perform. We’ll get the lads ready and hope for a good result.”
United – Barry, Maddison (Hopper 60), Fitzpatrick, O’Brien, Walsh, Allan, Chapman (O’Donoghue 60), Murray (Skinner 45), Swinburn, Hetherington (Nicholson 75), Park. Subs – Randall.
Goals – Swinburn (20), Park (26, 45, 85), Fitzpatrick (83)
Bookings – Walsh (6)