Blyth Spartans defeat 'hard to take' for South Shields defender

South Shields defender Gary Liddle described his side’s late defeat at Blyth Spartans as ‘a tough one to take’.

Under the interim charge of Elliott Dickman and Lee Picton for the first time since Julio Arca’s departure earlier this week, the Mariners were looking to avenge their Boxing Day defeat against Spartans after they secured a 3-1 win at the 1st Cloud Arena.

The duo are expected to be in charge of the Mariners for the foreseeable future and they wasted little time in getting down to work in training over the last 48 hours as they looked to raise spirits in the camp after an underwhelming run of recent form.

An early goal from Paul Blackett gave Dickman and Picton rich reward for that hard work on the training pitch - but they left Croft Park empty handed after an equaliser from Fin Cousin-Dawson and a late winner from former Mariners striker JJ Hooper gave the hosts all three points.

Former Hartlepool United centre-back Liddle reflected on a frustrating day at Croft Park after his side failed to put a positive end of what had been a difficult week for the club and insisted the Mariners squad must focus all of their strengthen on returning to winning ways next weekend.

He said: “We have worked so hard to try and get a result.

“We’ve had a lot of information thrown at us in the last couple of days.  Julio lost his job, Elliott came in, supplemented by Lee, so we’ve had a long couple of days trying to implement a game plan today and I thought it worked.

“We had a first good 20 minutes, we went ahead and I just thought when they scored we sat back a little bit and we didn’t do what we did in those first 20 minutes.  It’s a tough one to take, the last-minute goal was hard to take and we’ve said we can’t get too down, as hard as that is to say.

“We’ve got a new year to look forward to and hopefully we can go on to pastures new with the home game against Warrington next weekend.”