Second year youth players Aran Fitzpatrick, Josh O’Brien and Romeo Park were on the bench for Tuesday night’s Bristol Street Motors Trophy game against Harrogate and boss Paul Simpson explained how it was a deserved reward for the three young lads after their performance in the Cumberland Cup game against Aspatria last week.
“I said they didn’t earn it with the way they went about things in the FA Youth Cup against Barnsley but I thought the way they went about it against Aspatria meant they deserved that opportunity.
“I spoke to the whole group of them after I criticised the academy in the media and said look, football’s a really strange game. I’ve just given you a knock there and said I’m not happy about it. But it changes really quickly. If you make sure you keep working hard, you never know who’s watching, you never know who’s going to come, and I thought they were different the way they went about it at Aspatria.
“If that performance had been below standard I could very easily have not put three on the bench tonight but I felt they deserved a lift, and that’s why I gave them that.”
“It was disruptive for Josh to come back from his work experience at Workington,” he explained. “Jake Allan would have been given an opportunity but he had concussion so he missed out tonight, Josh was the next available defender so he came into it.
“I didn’t feel as though there was a chance to get them on tonight although Aran [Fitzpatrick] was close to coming on when Jack Armer got his bang on the head.
“I wanted to win the game at least 2-0 tonight so I wasn’t prepared to take any chances. Thankfully we’ve done that, but unfortunately for those lads they didn’t get on. They’ve got a shirt number now and if they don’t use it again they’ve got something as a keepsake.”