Parkway Look to Change the Tide
Parkway v Gloucester City| Match PreviewBy Jack Hobbs
With two losses from their opening two games, Plymouth Parkway will be hoping it’s third time lucky as they host Gloucester City at Bolitho this Saturday.
Parkway suffered defeat at the hands of Weymouth, losing 0-2 to the former National League side on Tuesday evening.
Despite periods of dominance, Parkway were unable to crack Weymouth’s defensive resolve, but manager Chris McPhee saw positive signs from his side’s performance.
“The feeling is completely different to what I felt after the game Saturday”, said McPhee.
“There was a certain sense of pride in the way we went about our business. There was real character, real energy, real heart in our performance, and we knew exactly what to expect from them.
“They came out of the traps relatively quickly and try and stuck a lot of pressure on us. Credit to them, they started brightly, they were on the front foot, physical, and once they scored the goal, I felt that made our boys relax a little bit.
“We started playing our football, wrestled a little bit of control of the game, and played some really, really good stuff in the first half. The only reason that we didn’t equalize is we just lacked that last cross, that last set, that last strike on goal.
“We just missed that little bit of quality in those moments. Ultimately, that that left us short.”
With a quick turnaround needed, all eyes have turned to Saturday’s clash with Gloucester.
The Tigers are sat top of the table, having beaten Gosport Borough 4-2 on the opening day and following it up with a 1-2 away win at Hungerford Town.
Despite odds seemingly stacked against them, Parkway have history in this fixture.
Only last season, with Parkway in a precarious league position, The Yellows welcomed the playoff chasing Tigers to Bolitho Park only to thrash them 6-0, with former Exeter City loanee Mitch Beardmore bagging the lot.
Speaking ahead of the clash, McPhee said: “We have to start bright.”
“We have to be brave and to compete physically. We have to be brave enough to get on the ball and try and to dictate play, like we did when we went a goal behind – we controlled the game.
“It’s another tough fixture, a tough opponent, but we know that the first five or six games of our campaign are going to be tough, and we felt we were ready.
“We felt confident in ourselves, and we’ve got real belief within the squad.
“In the changing rooms after the Weymouth game, there’s probably nothing that I could have said in that moment to make them feel any better, to make them feel any justice because we didn’t get what we deserved.
“But football is like that. You have to learn everything in football. We’ve got to dust ourselves down, we’ve got to recover, and we’ve got to try and find out what we’ve got available to us on Saturday.
“We’ll do our very best to turn up at Bolitho on Saturday to go again and give more heart and belief like we had on Tuesday. If we perform like we did against Weymouth week in week out, we will win more games than we don’t.”
Both Rocky Neal and James Watts-Barciela are doubts for Saturday, with the pair picking up knocks against Weymouth. Watts-Barciela is the likelier of the pair to feature on Saturday.
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