Tom’s thoughts on the Morpeth game

Following a harrowing 4-1 defeat at the hands of Morpeth on Tuesday Blyth manager Tom Wade, some may say rather bizarrely, said with regard to this weekend's fixture against Benfield that he's never been so excited about a match for a long time.

"With regard to the result against Morpeth-we were stuffed. With regard to the way we played-we were rubbish!" he said.

"But I'm dying for Saturday to come round to see how we react. We lacked fight the other night and looked jaded. Morpeth approached the game as a cup final and we took it as a training session. They fought for the ball all over the pitch. We didn't fight for it anywhere. That attitude is finished now. We have had an awakening. The season starts here. I know our best formation and we need to kick on.

"We had three players on Tuesday who had just come back from holiday and a day at work and we will have others available at the weekend so we need to be better then. The Whitley Bay games were a false dawn. A massive lesson has been learned."