BILLERICAY boss Craig Edwards has blasted some young managers who, he says, are too quick to call off matches on pitches which are less than perfect.

Basking in the glow of his team’s gritty 2-1 home victory over Harrow Borough on Tuesday night, the Town manager challenged managers to “man up” and get games on.

“Some of the younger managers think the ball’s got to bounce 4ft off the ground otherwise the match is going to be dangerous.

“I think they’ve watched too much Premier League football on the telly.

“Tuesday’s game was a tough one, and not a pretty match. But there were no injuries and the physio was only on the pitch twice.

“It was competitive and the challenges were going in properly, but there were no injuries.

“We’ve looked at the stats for when players get injured and it’s much more likely to be on ground which is too hard than too soft.

“Dave Anderson (the Harrow Borough boss) is old-school like me and he looked at it and wanted to play. It was a good game. Not pretty, but we got the game on.”

The match itself was, according to Edwards, fairly even in the first half but with Town dominating after the restart.

“It was a muddy pitch and we had some good chances but they went into the lead from a corner.

“We drew level five minutes after they scored with a good volley from Glen Poole.

“Glen’s goal came after some good work from Dave Collis and Joe Benjamin and Glenn hit it well to make sure we went in all square at half time.”

After the restart Ricky Sappleton got on the end of a decent free kick from out wide and his header fizzed into the back of the net.

Edwards said: “I don’t want to flag up any individual performance because it was not that sort of match.

“What was good was that everyone worked for each other and it was the whole team performance – including the subs – which pulled us through. Everyone mucked in.”

Edwards did draw attention to the financial problems which were making life difficult for Billericay Town due to the number of matches being off.

“We only about 180 people in on Tuesday night and I thought it would be more than that because I thought people would be raring to see some football.

“But there is the danger that fans get out of the habit of seeing non-league football.

“We’ve got Met Police away this weekend and we’ll be looking for revenge because they beat us at our place. Their pitch is very, very good so we’re hopeful of playing.

“Then we’ve got four home games on the trot so that should be a way to get a bit of momentum and get the fans back in,” he added.