Andy Butler reflects on half-way stage of pre-season following Brigg Town CIC encounter

Iron manager Andy Butler reflected upon his sides 0-0 draw and then penalty shootout victory over local outfit Brigg Town CIC as the Vanarama National league North season draws closer.

Firstly, Butler gave his opinions on his sides performance against the Zebras: “First of all thank you to Brigg Town for hosting us, but it was a tough surface for both teams, and the key messages to the players are that some of them got through 90 minutes, and all of us got through unscathed.

“Brigg played their part in a good game, despite at times the frustrating conditions that made it difficult for us to move the ball because we want to play in one touch ideally but instead it was taking three or four.”

The Iron had two goals disallowed on the day as striker Sam Fishburn and centre-back Andrew Boyce both saw goals chalked off for offences prior to them applying a finish, Butler gave his views on the goals saying: “For the first one it appeared like Fish (Fishburn) made a clever run and for the second I thought it was a perfectly good header. But at least the players are getting challenged by Brigg, who were a really physical side.

“I think the players worked hard and stood up to Brigg despite having quite a young average-aged side. I keep repeating it, but no players place in the side is confirmed, and just because players weren’t involved today doesn’t mean they’re not in the first team. It’s purely just making sure all players get equal minutes.”

With Butler’s side now finding themselves half-way through their pre-season preparations he gave an insight into how he feels his side are performing so far: “It’s been good, and we’ve been busy every day. We’ve had a range of different challenges and obviously Gainsborough was a slightly nicer surface than this, so we had to adapt today and become slightly more direct to Fish, which I think we did quite well."

Finally, After Scunthorpe’s play-off heartbreak at the hands of a penalty shootout last campaign, Butler proceeded to tell us how he felt the lads coped under the spot-kick pressure this time around. “It was good confidence from the lads and, although it wasn’t under as much pressure, it’s good to see that we can still have that winning mentality where we are winning games of football.”