Reserve Boss Eric Kinder talks about the Cumberland Cup victory over Cleator Moor:

I'm a little bit disappointed with how we played, to be honest. We should be a bit better than that, and that's no disrespect to Cleater Moor Celtic. I think it doesn't matter who we play, we can't take our foot off the pedal. I thought we could have passed the ball better and supported each other a bit better, and perhaps play more as a team.

I think there was also too much sideways and backwards passing. I think we could have pushed forward a bit more, and perhaps we were a bit slack in that respect. Then again, in games like this the lads can't really win. If they go out and win 7-0 then it's a case of that's exactly how it should be. If they struggle, or lose, then we tell them they should do better.

The team was 90% youth, and we (the youth team) have set ourselves very high standards this season, and I'm not sure we did ourselves justice. Yes, it's a win and yes, we're through to the semi-finals, but I think we should be.

With the players we have got we should be able to progress in this competition and, as I said before, I really mean no disrespect to Cleater Moor, because they came here, had their chance to play on Brunton Park and I hope they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

What I have to do though is be brutally honest, and if I'm doing that then I can't look at Cleater Moor or anyone else - I have to focus on us, and I didn't think it was a particularly good night for us. Sometimes we have to look beyond the result, look for the bigger picture, and that bigger picture was a little bit worrying in this game. 

I think too many of us tried to do things we aren't capable of doing, and what we should be doing is sticking to the things we can do, and are good at. Those things this season have been playing at a good tempo, keeping the ball moving and being strong and disciplined, and we didn't really do that very well against Celtic.

That said, of course, there are always positives to take from it. I think Connor Tinnion is getting bigger and stronger, and he looks like he's going to be a good player. He tormented their full back for most of the night, he's skilful and has quick feet, and he did well to get round the back for the first goal. He put over a good ball, Gary checked his run and put it back past the keeper, and it was a good finish. Unfortunately we didn't really put our foot down then, when we had a great opportunity to do so.

Our second goal came from what I felt was probably our best player on the night. I thought Darren Campion's enthusiasm for wanting to play was just outstanding. He took a couple of touches too many at times, but I can't fault him for that, because he went out and played with a real purpose and desire. His goal was a great strike to put us 2-0 up, before Connor finished it all off. It's probably only his third or fourth of the season, but it was a terrific goal. He danced his way through in to the box, and I was expecting him to set someone up, but he just side footed it in to the far corner. That was probably the highlight of the night for me.

The disappointing parts were that, at times, we wanted to do our own thing and didn't play well enough as a team, and because of that we didn't perform well enough. The bottom line is we made too many wrong decisions as a group of players, but we do know that we're better than that, and we will be again in the future. It's just a shame, because every time we go out to play football, you always want to play well and do your best. Ok so the conditions were difficult, the wind was howling and the pitch bouncy, but those are just excuses, and between us all we agree that we don't deal in excuses.

Overall, like I say, it was a poor performance, but the right result. That gives us another little headache, because it adds another fixture in to what is becoming a very crowded end of season programme for our lads.

We've got nine weeks left and I think between the youth, reserve and first teams we still have somewhere in the region of 40+ games to play, which is an awful lot. A ridiculous amount really, but that's what you get when you're successful, and you have to deal with it. For the youth lads they've had two terrific cup runs, are in the semi-finals of the Cumberland Cup and have lost an awful lot of games to the weather, so it might catch up with them.

We've just got to get on with it now and look forward to the next round!