Skipper Simon going to Bradford confident
By Ray Simpson
"We must take the positives from the Leamington game"
Simon is congratulated after scoring the first goal at Leamington on Saturday
Darlington skipper Simon Ainge says that Quakers are in a very good frame of mind when they go to Bradford Park Avenue on Tuesday night.
Skipper Ainge, who played 57 games for Bradford in two spells, lines up against his former club tonight with Quakers unbeaten in the last three matches, and 14th in the table.
“We’ve got the flair back in the team that we had at the start of the season,” he said. “We’re attacking well, creating chances and defensively we’re looking ok. We gave away two soft goals on Saturday, but apart from that we’ve looked really good.
“We were very disappointed not to come back with three points on Saturday, but three weeks ago before the FC United away game, we’d have snapped your hands off if we’d been offered seven points out of nine for the next three games.
“At 2-2, I thought we should have won the game, we still had a couple of chances in the last ten minutes or so.
“There’s no point in sulking about Saturday and dwelling upon it, it’s gone now -- that might turn out to be an important point later in the season. I’d rather think about all the positives from the game. I’m going to Bradford confident that we can win.”
Simon thought that he could have two penalties in the second half on Saturday. “I had a shot with my left foot, and their defender put his hand up and handled the ball quite clearly – you see those incidents on television and penalties are given.
“For the second one, I got past the guy and he dragged me back.”
Simon is forming a very good partnership with Harvey Saunders, with the pair of them grabbing goals on Saturday – Simon now has four to his name and Harvey five – and he said; “I’m starting to feel as if I’m getting attempts on goal now. Harvey and I are working well together, I’m doing the physical stuff and he willingly does the running in the channels and closing down defenders. He knows where he’s got to be, and I know where to put the ball. He stretches defenders, and they don’t like that.”
