British Gas Business Football League

Premier Division

Easter Monday 13th April 2009

Collier's proud as his battlers fall short

Supermarine boss Mark Collier played tribute to his players yesterday after admitting a place in the Southern Premier play-offs was never in the equation. Any lingering hopes of a top-five finish vanished as Gloucester City scraped a 1-0 win at Hunts Copse, but while Marine’s pre-Christmas form created dreams of promotion in South Marston, Collier insists he always thought his team would fall short of such great expectations.

“We knew all along really,” said the Marine boss. “We never talked about the play-offs ourselves because we knew we had this tough run of games coming at the end of the season so it was always going to be a massive ask. “The objective was always to beat last season’s points total of 54 and that’s exactly the amount we have at the moment.

“We have a couple more very difficult games left, but hopefully we can do enough to beat last year’s total. “What I do know is that there are a lot of big clubs struggling against relegation in this division at the moment and we’re not one of them.” Monday’s game played out much the as the 2-1 loss at Corby 48 hours earlier as Marine, playing their 12th league game in 30 days, put in a really gritty display but on empty fuel tanks.

Alan Griffin led the line well and twice fired wide in a dreary first half, but the visitors struck the decisive goal five minutes into the second period when Luke Ballinger cut inside and fired past teenage stand-in keeper Ben Goodey. Mark Draycott went close to levelling and then had a very good penalty appeal waved away after being tackled from behind in the box.

So another fruitless afternoon for Marine but Collier was still full of praise for his troops, who must dust themselves off again for a clash with Cambridge next. He said: “We had seven players out today and that left a big hole in the squad. “All the games we’ve had recently have started to catch up with us and two or three lads who have played in all the games have started to run out of gas. “We were very unlucky not to get a draw. The Gloucester bench admitted they were fortunate with that penalty shout and we had a 17-year-old goalkeeper who came in and did really well. “But we’ve still given two top sides a real run for their money. I’m very proud of my players .”