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Danny Searle Pre-Match: Weymouth FC (A)

After Easter Monday’s professional performance away at Dagenham & Redbridge, Aldershot Town will look to continue their winning ways on the road against Weymouth FC on Tuesday evening.

Hear what the gaffer Danny Searle had to say in full:

Q: Danny we return to action with an away trip to Weymouth, your thoughts ahead of the game.

“Yeah, it’s good to be back playing, we managed to get some behind closed doors stuff done on Saturday so that was good to get some minutes inside of the lads’ legs. Obviously, we want to play league games so I’m really looking forward to it.”

Q: Like you mentioned, we didn’t have an official league game this weekend but what we did as a club over the weekend was promote mental health and the importance of it, both with your message and the shot of positivity message.

“With what we’ve put out, we wanted to do something a little bit different. I understand and appreciate and respect all of the club’s decisions for their social media blackout, but I think sometimes I think you’ve got to fight fire with fire.

“For every negative comment that is out there if you double with the amount of positive comments, sooner or later it will drown out the negativity. I thought the work that you did over the weekend with the shot of positivity was outstanding and I think we’ve set a real example.

“I think the only disappointing thing was that people still seem to find negatives in it, which is crazy, but you’re always going to get those people. I thought the work the club did over the weekend was excellent.”

Q: And to be fair, me relaying your message to you, your mental health message that we did on the Friday really seemed to hit home with a lot of people.

“Yeah I’ve had a lot of messages on LinkedIn especially with people I know in other industries and they’ve said that they have shown it to their staff and bosses because this isn’t just a football thing, obviously it’s prominent for us in football because we’re in football.

“People’s mental health is crucial everywhere and especially over the last year with COVID and job uncertainty, are you going to be made redundant or put on part-time work, I think we need to have a better empathy with the fact that people will struggling.

“Also, talking about the social media, as a family we discussed over the weekend, when you’re being negative to someone over social media, you’re not just being negative to them, their parents read it, their husbands or wives read it, their children read it, grandparents, aunts and uncles, it’s not nice. So as a club we’re making a stand and we’re going to be positive, if you want to bring in any negativity that’s fine but we won’t be accepting that.”

Q: Looking back to the football, we’ve had a small break since our last away game against Dagenham, looking at the Weymouth game we’ll be hoping to go there and get some revenge in a way.

“I think the night we played Weymouth every went against us, we had a mix up at the back which led to the first goal, Mitch then got sent off, we had a slip which led to the second goal and actually over the course of the night we played well, even with 10 men we played reasonably well. We created chances and you’d like to think we can go there and hopefully right some wrongs.”

Q: One thing that has been noticed recently is our away form, it does seem to particularly this season, do well on the road. Why do you think that is, the fact that there’s no fans or any of reason?

“I don’t know, is the honest answer to that, because there aren’t any fans to influence proceedings, so I don’t know. Maybe it’s a psychological thing of just being in the stadium and the pressure of knowing we’re expected to be successful, but I don’t know.

“I’ll be honest with you, from our perspective, because there’s no fans this year, where your points come from doesn’t really matter as long as we keep putting points on the board I don’t really care where they come from.”

Q: As you briefly mentioned the result here with Weymouth, we did play some good football, but it was disappointing the way the game panned out.

“As I said, you’re down to 10 men against a team that’s already 1-0 up then just before half time, we were confident that if we went in at half-time, we’d still get something from the game, then unfortunately for Finney he falls over, they go through on goal and a great finish from the lad.

You can’t legislate for those things, those things just sometimes happen. What we’ve got to do is put that behind us, take the positives from the last few games that we’ve played and take that into tomorrow.”

Q: They’ll be looking to bounce back from their defeat against Torquay at the weekend as well.

“Yeah, they’re a good side, they’ve got some very talented players and I think some of the football they play is good and they’ve got a threat in behind. We have the same conversation every week, it’s going to be a tough place to go, a lot of teams have found it difficult to go and get points there this year, so I don’t imagine it being any easier for us.”

 

You can also sign up for the Weymouth FC streaming service which starts around kick-off at 7:45pm on Tuesday HERE.

You can the full interview on our official YouTube channel HERE!