AFTER a difficult first half Thackley put in a commanding second half display to run out 4-0 winners in their home derby against Albion Sports in the Northern Counties East Premier Division.

The hosts led by a single goal at the break after Dan Broadbent had rifled a 22-yard free-kick into the top corner, leaving Albion keeper Jamie White flat footed on his line.

It was a half that lacked quality apart from that stunning 12th minute strike but the second period was a much better spectacle, although it was Thackley who produced the majority of it.

Which left their manager Pat McGuire a very happy man. The Dennyboys’ boss said: “The conditions were bad, the swirling wind, the rain and a pitch that was cutting up, so it was never going to be a classic but we adapted and to get four goals and clean sheet is really pleasing.

“It was a great free-kick that gave us the lead but it went a bit flat after that and I thought we were in our comfort zone and we needed to get out of it. When we got in at half-time we said to the lads that we had a couple more gears to go through and to be fair to them they lifted their game in the second half.

“That’s two clean sheets on the trot, six goals and six points. We’ve got goals in us and they took them well. We could have had a few more.”

Thackley’s Asa Mitchell had hit the bar late in the first half but they eventually doubled their lead just a few minutes before the hour mark. An excellently flighted free-kick from Jack Normanton picked out James Rothel and he planted a header past White.

There was less than a quarter of an hour remaining when Broadbent made way for Owen Murphy but there was enough time for the substitute to weigh in with a late brace.

Murphy raced onto a through ball and beat two men to open up the space for shot, which he steered across White and into the far bottom corner. Murphy added his second into stoppage time with the assist, and much of the credit, going to Normanton.

The Thackley forward had hung back and found himself in acres of space when a loose ball had the Albion defence turning sharply.

Normanton seized possession, burst into the area and then rolled the ball across to Murphy. His first shot was blocked by a covering defender and his second attempt was cleared but the assistant referee’s flag was raised as one of the two attempts had crossed the line.

Lions boss John Francis said: “It was a difficult day, the pitch is a leveller but sometimes you have to play to your strengths and Thackley did that better than us.

“There wasn’t a lot between the teams in the first half and it was a great strike by their lad at the free-kick, there’s not a lot you can do about that. But we went from bad to worse in the second half, the harder our players tried to get back into it, the more it went wrong for them.

“We have a lot of inexperienced lads and I think that showed. We have some very good footballers but you couldn’t play football on that pitch in those conditions so you have to do things differently.

“That’s what I mean about playing to your strengths, we didn’t and they did and we were well beaten in the end. I’ve got no complaints about the result.”