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Tuesday night’s captain Ethan Hartshorn netted the only goal in Congleton’s encounter with Barnoldswick.
The midfielder rose the highest in the latter stages of the first half and saw his looping header nestle in the back of Henry Turner’s net.
A game of very few chances, in which Richard Duffy described his side’s performance as “workmanlike”. But Tuesday was another example of how The Bears are able to win and keep a clean sheet in games that are far from pretty.
Tom Hampton had the best chances for the home side. After the interval, the striker saw a powerful header fly inches over the crossbar before seeing a long range effort expertly tipped onto the bar by Turner.
Barnoldswick had chances themselves with Ben Ashton and Alexander Maloney seeing efforts whistle narrowly wide of Dave Parton’s goal, with the goalkeeper relatively untroubled for the duration on the game.
Speaking after the game, player manager Richard Duffy highlighted the scrappiness of the game but praised his side’s game management after going ahead just before the interval:
“We scrapped our way through the game, there wasn’t too much flow to it but we got the goal in the first half and saw the game out really well.”
With some huge games on the horizon, injuries are the last thing any player wants right now but Lewis Short went off with a hamstring issue, however Duffy is hoping they caught the injury early and that it isn’t so serious.
“We hope so [caught Short’s injury early], he did feel it, so we will have to assess him over the next few days, obviously he won’t be available Saturday and we’ll go from there.
“We’ve got a few bodies down on the floor at the moment, we have to try and get them back otherwise we are low on numbers.
“The boys who come in tonight I thought they did fantastic, not many minutes in them, young Marco [Fregapane] I thought was fantastic, Tom Hampton up top, Ollie [Griffiths] coming on there who played 90 minutes for the reserves last night.
“We’ve got players who can come into the team and I’ve got full confidence in everyone.”
On the topic of injuries, Shakeel Jones-Griffiths has missed Congleton’s last couple of games but Duffy is hoping to have the midfielder back in training next week.
“We expect him to be back [soon], it’s a matter of letting him rest and coast him through the next week and get him ready for next Saturday. We aim to get him training Thursday to get some work under his belt.”
Ethan Hartshorn was awarded captaincy on Tuesday and in turn came up with the only goal of the game, a goal which Duffy believes the midfielder was fully deserving of.
“We were laughing at it because we don’t know how much he knew about the goal! But you have to be in the right place at the right time.
“He deserved that and I think we deserved the goal. But as I say, I can’t fault anyone with the amount of games we’ve played and we aren’t done yet.”
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