St Ives boss salutes his troops

St Ives Town manager Ricky Marheineke praised his side’s determination as they recovered from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 at play-off-chasing Tiverton Town on Saturday.

Marheineke’s side were 2-0 down just after half-time, but rallied with three second-half goals, culminating in a 90th-minute winner from substitute Declan Rogers.

Oliver Snaith’s brace got St Ives on level terms, before Rogers’ injury-time winner consigned Tiverton to their third defeat from 14 games at home this season.

“I think a few weeks ago, we would’ve gone on to lose the game by three or four, because we were on a bad run and we were low on confidence,” Marheineke said.

“Back then, it was a case of ‘here we go again’ when you’re on a poor run. Having gone into the game in good form, with a new group of players, the mentality hasn’t been like that of a losing team.

“Since the start of the season there have been a lot of new players that have come in. Even when we went 2-0 down, it wasn’t a fair reflection of how the game had gone, and you could see the players had that determination and togetherness to turn it around.

“We didn’t think negatively, we thought ‘come on, let’s get back into this’, and it was really good to see that we did.”

The victory means St Ives have now collected 11 points from their last five matches, moving them up to fourth from bottom in the Evo-Stik Southern Premier. Marheineke now has his sights firmly set on getting out of the bottom four.

“We haven’t become a good side overnight. We need to continue to work hard. We’re still seven points off the team above us,” he added.

“If it was any other season and four teams were going down, we would still be seven points off getting out of the drop zone, so we need to try to catch Bishop’s Stortford as quickly as we can.

“I don’t want people labelling us as a team who would’ve gone down had four teams been relegated, because I think we’re better than that.

“If we can get out of the bottom four, that would be a really successful season given the position we were in six to eight weeks ago.”

Source Cambridge News