'We aren't pointing fingers' - Sunderland West End move on from Yarm & Eaglescliffe's 'greatest ever comeback'
How Sunderland West End have reacted to their dramatic 6-5 defeat against Ebac Northern League rivals Yarm and Eaglescliffe.
It was the sort of comeback that the writers of Roy of the Rovers would have deemed as too unrealistic for arguably football’s greatest fictional hero.
Even the Hollywood creators of Goal’s Santiago Munez or Sky’s cult series Dream Team, where assassination attempts at Wembley and a goalkeeper holding his team-mates hostage were deemed passable, would have scoffed in the face of such heroics. Yet reality trumped fiction at Sunderland West End’s Ford Hub home on Saturday afternoon as an Ebac Northern League clash with Division Two rivals and current league leaders Yarm and Eaglescliffe produced a comeback that has made worldwide headlines.
West End looked set to continue what has already been a much-improved season as Lewis Lukeman and Craig Linsel both scored twice and Riley Mouat also found the net to put their side 5-2 ahead as the game made its way into second-half injury-time. The visitors, who had lost just two of their 21 league games so far this season, rallied as striker Tom Atkinson completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot to reduce the arrears with 92 minutes on the clock. Just four minutes later, a series of events now being dubbed as ‘the greatest comeback in football history’ was played out as a Steven Roberts brace and Atkinson’s fourth goal of the day helped Yarm turned the game on its head and leave West End feeling punch-drunk as the full-time whistle was blown.
Understandably, much has been made of the visitors heroics as they overturned seemingly insurmountable odds to claim the most unlikely of wins to further boost their bid for promotion. Yet West End’s part of this story has fallen by the wayside, lost in a midst of drama and glory. For manager Steve Cockrill, the comeback has left a haze of frustration and a degree of anger - but he opted to look for the collective effort rather than point the finger of blame after the most chastening of afternoons.
“My reaction was one of frustration, not just because we let a lead slip but because we’d lost a game we should have closed out,” he told The Echo. “It’s a collective, we aren’t pointing fingers, we win as a team, we lose as a team, we don’t blame anyone, we are all in this together. It’s a result that goes down for everyone, for the players, for the management teams. As frustrating as it is, I can’t fault them because they’ve been unbelievable this season and we have seen a huge improvement. The frustration of losing the game, it feels like a bad defeat, even though it wasn’t a heavy defeat.”
Even when the arrears were reduced early in stoppage-time just moments after Cockrill’s side came close to extending their lead, West End could and should have had enough in the locker to see out time. Yet slowly but surely, with the tide turning against his side, the West End boss felt the tension rising as the visitors roared back into the game at such a belated stage. The events of injury-time have taken some time to move on from - but Cockrill revealed a positive training session held on Tuesday night has helped both coaching staff and players get their heads around the events of Saturday afternoon and focus on the challenges that lie in wait.
He said: “When we were 5-2 up we had a chance to get a sixth goal and we didn’t take it. They went up the other end and scored, then we gave a penalty away and that was the turning point and that’s when you start getting that feeling. You try to arrest that side and you hope we can manage the game better - then the rest is history. It’s tough to take, it’s taken me a few days to get over it. We trained on Tuesday night, we needed that session together because we ironed a few things out and we are now ready to move on.”
Despite their chastening defeat at the hands of Yarm, West End are in the midst of what has already been an overwhelmingly positive season. After narrowly avoiding relegation into the Wearside League in the final weeks of last season, a fast-paced and progressive rebuild of the playing squad has taken the club into the safety of mid-table with the second half of the current season lying ahead of them. Cockrill’s side have already claimed 29 points from their 22 league fixtures and are already just two points shy of last season’s total. They also put in an impressive performance as they fell to a 5-3 defeat in a Durham Challenge Cup tie at Hebburn Town earlier this month. Whilst Saturday’s dramatic defeat was without question a blow, a look at the bigger picture should still show cause for optimism as West End look to move on and move forwards throughout the remainder of the season.
The West End boss said: “This season, we have improved massively. We go on a good run, then we lose our way a touch, but we regain our composure and go again. We have a good group of players here and they are moving us forwards as a club. There are a lot of young players in there, they are developing and there is some naivety within the group but they are constantly getting better and they will learn from this because we will make sure that they continue to improve and continue helping this club move forwards.”
West End are back in action on Saturday afternoon when they travel to face an Esh Winning side sat firmly in the promotion race.