Mark Beesley reacts to South Shields draw

Warrington Town manager Mark Beesley is pleased with his side after they picked up a point in a 1-1 draw away at South Shields in the National League North.

The Yellows took the lead just before the half-hour mark after Sean Williams fired home from the spot.

Despite leading for much of the second half, the visitors, who played on Monday in a derby day clash against Chester, fell to a South Shields equaliser who looked the fresher side going into the later stages of the clash.

Speaking post-match, Beesley said: “If you come up here [South Shields] and get a point, then you take that.

“They’re a full-time club, I know that they’re in a difficult period but they’ve been working all week on stuff – they didn’t play on Monday like us and, probably as the game progressed, you could see that they were a bit fresher than us and they came on strong.

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“They scored a deserved equaliser and I think that the draw was a fair result.”

Sean Williams grabbed the Yellows’ only goal of the afternoon after an emphatic penalty, but his set-piece deliveries caused problems for the Mariners’ defence in the early stages of the game.

Tom Hannigan had two efforts on goal from Williams’ corners, one of which was cleared off of the line, but Beesley insists that his team must improve their goalscoring capabilities from set-pieces.

“One thing that we need to be better at is that we need to score from set pieces – it’s something that we haven’t really done this year,” he said.

“Tom had two chances, one was a great header and the other was cleared off the line so you can’t go much closer than that.

“I thought that we were excellent in the first half. We controlled them well out of possession.

“In the second half, [South Shields] probably deserved a point – they’ve got one of the best forwards in the league who showed great movement and composure to score so it was a fair result in the end.”

Warrington Town defender Mitch Duggan made his 200th appearance for the club on Saturday, a career which started back in 2017 when he first appeared in a 1-0 win over Hednesford Town in the Northern Premier League.

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Since then, Duggan has become an important player, particularly under Mark Beesley where he has been called upon to fill in across the backline in the absence of key players, and the manager was quick to sing his praises.

“It’s an outstanding achievement [to reach 200 appearances]. As a player, he’s been great for me, he’s excellent in training,” Beesley added.

“He gets the tempo up and he’s a winner. Sometimes he makes the odd mistake but so does everyone.

“He’s a great defender – no one really gets past him and as you saw today, he cleared one from under his own crossbar and that shows his commitment to the club.”

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