Aspin hails his Halifax players for how they bridged the ‘gulf’ against Hatters

Halifax boss Neil Aspin felt you couldn’t tell the ‘gulf’ between the two clubs as the impressive Shaymen were desperately unlucky to lose out 4-3 to Luton at Kenilworth Road on Saturday, writes Mark Wood.
Luton Town FC. Stock images.Luton Town FC. Stock images.
Luton Town FC. Stock images.

And while the Halifax chief was disappointed to concede so many goal as they surrendered a 3-1 lead, he was pleased by the way they acquitted themselves.

He said: “You’re always disappointed when you concede goals, but we’ll take the positives from the game.

“There is a massive difference in terms of size of the club and finances, but on the pitch there wasn’t a gulf at all and I think that is credit to the players who have done fantastically well so I am really proud of the players.

“We haven’t come here to sit back, we’ve been very positive and extremely good going forward.

“Obviously we didn’t defend as well as we could have done which goes without saying.

“But if you think about it, Luton went off to Portugal for pre-season whereas we were scratching around for a piece of grass to train on, it’s obviously a massive difference.”

The experienced former Leeds United and Port Vale defender played well over 600 times during his career, and revealed he had rarely been involved in a game like it.

He continued: “I’ve played and managed in a lot of games in my career but there’s not been many that have been 3-3 at half-time so it might have been a first but it was certainly a fantastic game.”

The Shaymen played more conservatively in the second half and Aspin was left to curse their luck as they were twice denied by the woodwork.

He added: “The game was too open in the first-half and we were playing with a back-four in the first-half that has done reasonably well, but we needed another defender on to tidy things up.

“As I say, defensively we played a lot better in the second half, but once again we didn’t have the luck or the breaks after hitting the woodwork twice.

“But if we keeping playing like that then we’ll be competitive and rack points up on the board.”