“No question marks” Williams backs players’ discipline after another red card for Gloucester City

Gloucester City manager Daf Williams has dismissed the idea of a discipline problem for his side after seeing their eighth red card of the season in Saturday’s FA Trophy defeat at Marine.

Ben Morgan was issued a red card just before the hour mark in the Tigers’ 1-1 draw in the FA Trophy Fourth Round, before falling to defeat on penalties.

There were murmurs on social media from Gloucester City fans after the match, after Morgan becomes the latest player set to sit out to serve a suspension.

City were without Elis Watts and Harry Pinchard, who were serving suspensions after red cards at Taunton, whilst Marcus Day was only playing after his red in the defeat at Christmas was rescinded following an appeal.

But after the game, Williams spoke to Butler for BBC Radio Gloucestershire and backed his players, but whilst admitting Morgan’s challenge was worthy of a red card, he feels his side have been hard done by on a number of red card decisions this season.

“It’s a disappointing moment of the game because if it wasn’t for that [the red card], we’d maybe win it,” said Williams. “But equally, it brought out a certain side of the lads, which we’ve seen before and that’s something that we can go away and use as a bit of a platform moving forward in terms of the resilience that they showed to get a result.

I’ve been quite vocal about the other red cards that we’ve had and I think only one has been the right decision, but yeah, that’s a poor red in a really poor stage of the game – so we’re disappointed with that one.

It might sound like sour grapes, it might sound like I’m looking for excuses, but if you look at the games, I genuinely believe we’ve been very hard done by a lot of them [the red cards].

As I said though, that one, there’s no complaints it’s a really poor tackle and I thought the officials were very good today.

But I wouldn’t say we’ve got a discipline problem. I can completely appreciate how it might look from the outside, but there’s no question marks for me in terms of the lads’ ability to mostly control themselves and make good decisions in certain moments,” Williams added.

The game itself saw an impressive display from Williams’ side and after taking the lead through Sion Spence, were ahead at the break – with Spence and Harry Emmett in particular having guilt edge chances in a superb first 10 minutes of the second half from the Tigers.

But after conceding a leveller and Morgan’s red card, City defended well and still created chances to win the game in 90 minutes – and were ultimately unlucky to lose in the shoot-out.

Following a battling display, Williams was rightly fully pleased with his players and expressed his pride for not just Saturday’s performance, but their FA Trophy run as a whole.

“I’m really proud and that’s not for the first time,” said Williams. “We asked for a reaction to last week and they certainly did that.

We’ve come to a difficult place and credit to Marine, I think they’re very, very good at what they do. And it’s a really difficult game to play, especially when it’s probably at the end of the spectrum to what we try and do. But I thought the lads stood up to that magnificently from start to finish.

But yeah I am really proud of them. I feel for them and I’m disappointed for them, but we’ll realign our focus now to the league, which is a priority.

We did see it as an opportunity to progress even further, but even to get to today, the lads have done ever so well. They’ve played two teams in the league above, one of them that was on an unbelievable run in Worthing.

And they’ve come here again, a totally different team in terms of style, obviously a different league being in the north and it was a really positive day to see that we can compete at the level above.

The first half was the perfect half for us, really, because we had a good idea of what the game might look like and it panned out that way and I thought they were even better than in the second half.

I thought we created two or three really, really good chances before they scored, so we could have gone 2-0 up. And then, obviously, the sending off makes it very, very difficult, but I thought they were brilliant,” Williams added.

Before the match, when speaking on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, Williams confirmed that he is looking to bring in at least one new player following Mitch Roberts and Sopuru Obieri’s loans expiring this week.

Williams also confirmed that he is hopeful that Keiran Thomas, who recently returned to full training, should be ready to return to action at the end of January.

Gloucester City have a huge Southern League fixture away at league leaders Walton & Hersham at the end of the month, however have a trip to Havant & Watelooville and home fixture against Tiverton Town to negotiate over the next two weekends.

READ MORE: Check out the list of Saturday’s results in and around Gloucestershire right here

Cover photo taken and copyright Jamie Brain Photography. Visit his Instagram @jamiebrain_photography