ALTHOUGH basking in the glory of a best ever start to a Welsh Premier season Rhyls senior coach Allan Bickerstaff insisted his team has its work cut out to make it six successive wins at next-to-bottom Neath this weekend.
Sundays trip to The Gnoll is by no means a foregone conclusion for the table-topping Lilywhites with the Eagles showing signs of recovery after a nightmare start to the campaign. Andrew Dyers men picked up their first point at Caersws on Saturday and the week before only lost 1-0 to Bangor City.
Neath will be a decent team this season they just need one win to get them going, said Bickerstaff.
They proved last season what a good team they are and were expecting a tough test.
Neath are noted for being rather physical which is not particularly good news for Rhyl after Saturdays crunching clash with Haverfordwest.
Despite returning to the top of the league and making it their finest ever opening to a Welsh Premier campaign by completing a fifth consecutive victory, Rhyl were left to rue a series of injuries caused largely by the physical approach of their opponents.
One particularly cynical challenge forced substitute Craig Jones to hobble off just minutes after taking the field.
Yet referee Carmelo LoFaro had such a lack of control over proceedings he booked only one Haverfordwest offender in the whole match and that was not until the 77th minute.
While Bickerstaff did not wish to comment on the performance of the match officials, he was slightly critical of some of the visitors tackles.
There were some poor challenges out there and we came off worst, said Bickerstaff. We won 2-0 and kept another clean sheet thats the main thing but its also frustrating weve finished the game with a number of injuries.
Ive got seven players nursing niggles and the worst of them, Greg Strong and Craig Jones, had to come off.
Well need to monitor the fitness of both during the week; both are big players for us. Craig is not starting regularly at the moment and I know hes frustrated by that, but hes a massive part of this club. I just dont want to change a winning team.
Bickerstaff added he was only made aware during the week that a win on Saturday would give Rhyl their best WPL start.
Its fantastic, Im very proud, he said. Its great to be top of the league, great for the football club, but its early days and theres a lot of work to do to ensure we are still up there at the end of the season.
The senior coach was also delighted with the crowd of 522. Myself and Osian (Roberts head coach) have always wanted us to play good football and we have been getting lots of compliments about the way we play. The fans are superb its a great partnership.
Jamie Reed scored a goal in each half to send Rhyl back to the top and the Lilywhites also hit the woodwork twice.
RHYL: Kendall, Connolly, Stones, Strong (ONeill 68), Horan, G Owen, Kelly, Williams, Reed, N Roberts, Johnson (Jones 75 C Owen 83).
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