Daniel Moore senses Hebburn Town belief after draw at Morpeth Town

Daniel Moore praised his Hebburn Town side for ‘backing up’ Saturday’s 5-1 home hammering of Bamber Bridge with a battling goalless draw at Morpeth Town.

For the second time in the opening month of the season, the Hornets ventured to Northumberland, but failed to match last month’s narrow win at Blyth Spartans and they failed to break the deadlock at Craik Park in a game that would have produced so much more had it not been for a lack of composure in key areas from both sides.

Speaking after the game, Moore told The Gazette: “It’s a good point. We’ve come away from home, they’re in decent form and I’ll take a point all day long and move on to the next one. That point backs up the win on Saturday. It’s easy to look at it and think we had a good performance on Saturday - but if you come here and get beat, it’s irrelevant. We’ve come here and backed it up with a good point, a decent 0-0 draw, for the neutral, not for us. As a club, we’ve had that belief, but when you go and get the points, it makes you feel you belong there.”

It was the hosts that started the game on top as Nic Bollado curled a shot over the bar from the edge of the area before Hornets keeper Kieran Hunter produced a smart save to deny Will Dowling. But it was Moore’s men that enjoyed the better of the final quarter of an hour in the first-half as Joe Posthill was narrowly off-target and Olly Martin had a shot parried to safety by Morpeth’s former Newcastle United goalkeeper Dan Langley.

Just as they had in the opening 45 minutes, it was the hosts that were on top after the restart as Will Dowling saw a deflected effort saved by Hunter and Jack Foalle volleyed over before Hebburn’s retort came via two wild efforts from Martin. It would be Highwaymen who would have the final chances to snatch all three points as the lively Foalle dragged a shot wide of the far post after good work from Fenton John before Bollado was also off target in the final minute of the game. Highwaymen boss Craig Lynch felt his side probably deserved more than a solitary point and bemoaned a lack of cutting edge at the top end of the pitch.

“It’s probably, from our point of view, two points dropped. We started the game really well and in the first 20 minutes we were brilliant. We had two chances where we haven’t made the keeper work and I expect our players to have that quality in those situations and I just thought that was what were lacking in the game. Hebburn are where they are in the table and they’ve come up and found no issues with it because they’ve got a good setup and they’ve got players in the right positions that do their jobs.”

Elsewhere in the Premier Division, Blyth Spartans claimed their first league win of the season as Billy Gordon got the only goal of their home game against Workington and Stockton Town fell to a 2-1 defeat at Lancaster City. Michael Sweet got the Anchors on level-terms after Dominic Lawson had given their hosts an early lead - but it was the Dolly Blues that took the points thanks to a Nic Evangelinos strike just before the hour-mark.

Morpeth Town: Langley, Evans, Robson, Dowling, Henderson, Wombwell, John, Hickey, Foalle, Bollado, James Subs: King, Chater, Taylor, Davison, Whitfield

Hebburn Town: Hunter, Heywood, Turner, Thompson, Donaghy, Elsdon, Noble, Van Zandvliet (Spence), Walton (Adamson), Martin (Groves), Posthill Subs: Devitt, Robinson