Town First-Team Coach Ross Embleton was delighted with how his youthful Development Side handled themselves against an experienced Cheltenham Town outfit on Tuesday.
Although able to boast experienced campaigners in the ilk of Sean Murray and Conor Thomas amongst their ranks, the Reds named a mixture of First and Second Year Scholars in their matchday squad for yesterday’s Central League clash, while Cheltenham were able to call upon a number of first-team players including the likes of Aaron Downes, Kyle Storer, Harry Pell, Billy Waters and James Dayton.
However, despite falling behind to a Dan Holman penalty, Town hauled themselves level after the interval and were unlucky not to take all three points in the closing stages of the game, leaving Embleton pleased with the overall performance of his side.
“I thought we performed well and the game looked like a proper game of football, as silly as that may sound,” he said.
“Sometimes these reserve games or U23’s football can get palmed off as not very competitive but Tuesday’s game was a good advert for the fact that they can be very, very productive opportunities for everyone.
“I thought the young boys grasped their opportunity. We don’t have a Development group that train together every day like a lot of big teams have got, so a lot of the work we do with the boys is before and after the game when we talk about what we want to see from them.
“They executed a lot of what we wanted to see and the pitch at Swindon Supermarine last week made it difficult for us, but the circumstances on Tuesday were a little bit easier for everybody and it allowed us to go and play some good football.
“We had to go and have a battle at the same time because of the opposition we were up against but there were some really good performances.”
