Boss demands rapid response

10:18am Sat Jan 19, 2013

Manager Tony Joynes is looking for a response from his players after a 4-1 derby defeat to Southwell City severely dented Newark Town’s promotion challenge.

Town slid to third in the table, passed by Belper United and Sutton Town, but Joynes believes his team will still have a say in the promotion race.

He said: “If I’m being realistic, our league challenge may have gone out of the window, but we still have to play Belper, Sutton, and Bilborough, so the season isn’t over by any means.

“We have lost seven games now, which isn’t title-winning form, and I thought we deserved to lose, on Saturday, even though 4-1 flattered them.

“The Southwell players seemed a little more hungry for the win than us so we will be sitting down to reassess the squad and look at one or two positions that can be improved.”

Joynes refused to blame his team’s run of three successive league defeats on their injury list, with includes influential players such as Simon Ellison, Simon Greenfield, Ricky Brewer, and James Lloyd, but admits his team looked light in some areas of the pitch.

“Up front we were a bit lightweight. The only time we threatened was just after we had scored, but they withstood everything we threw at them.

“It’s a mystery why we didn’t seem as up for it as they did, but we did talk about the importance of not conceding early and their goal early on had a massive impact because it put us on the back foot straight away.”

Joynes is keen to see a response in their next two games against Nottingham United and Calverton, who are languishing near the foot of the table.

“We can still look to improve on our fifth-place finish last season, which was the highest we had ever finished and we have got the Floodlit Cup, League Cup, and Notts Senior Cup to fight for so there’s plenty of big games left for us,” he said.

“We’ve got to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and get maximum points from as many games as we can now.”