North Ferriby United boss Billy Heath never doubted his players

By Ciaran Fletcher

UNITED boss Billy Heath hailed his side's composure after they overturned a two-goal first-leg deficit to beat in the North play-off semi-final.

The Villagers trailed Boston 2-0 from the first game at York , but an early penalty from Liam King and goals from Tom Denton and Danny Clarke saw the return leg finish 3-0. Heath maintains that he was confident that his players could turn the tie on its head.

Heath told The : “I always thought with this group of players that we were going to get a reaction, I don't think that was ever in any doubt. The question was whether or not we'd be able to get three goals, or even take it to extra-time.

“It was great to get an early goal, but we said we didn't need to score, we had to be patient. Ideally of course we wanted to score as early as we could, but we'd said to the players not to leave ourselves open or push too hard because if Boston had scored, the tie would have been finished.

“We had a balancing act to do. Once we scored the first goal, you saw the reaction of the Boston players, and after the second goal there was only going to be one winner.”

Despite Ferriby finishing three places above Boston, Heath claimed that his side were viewed as underdogs due to the clubs' differing size and support; around 1,600 of the 2,000 strong crowd were Boston United fans.

Heath said: “In a funny way, it felt like we were still at Boston because we were outnumbered in the crowd about four to one. Obviously we had home advantage, and our pitch is quite tight, but in many ways it was like playing an away game.

“I think the fact we were underdogs took the pressure off, a lot of people had written us off. If they'd seen the first leg then rightly so! But we believed; we'd been saying to the players since that Wednesday night that if we believe in it, we can turn it over.”

Ferriby will take on AFC in the final, and Heath reckons it'll be another tough test for his side.

“We are wary of Fylde because they're a really good team and they've got some really good players,” he added. “It will be another tough game. But we've got home advantage and I'm looking forward to the game.”

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