Toole aiming to engineer great escape for Recs

Jul 19 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

ST HELENS RECS may be bottom of the Premier League but Ruskin Drive skipper Stuart Toole insists that he has not even considered what his club might do if its first team is relegated to the First Division of the Business Assistance Liverpool Competition.

Recs lie 18 points behind 12th-placed Wallasey going into today’s home game against Southport and Birkdale, a fixture Toole describes as “huge” in his team’s 10-game battle to climb up the table.

“While I’m obviously disappointed with the way things have gone, there’s still a lot of the season left,” he pointed out. “We’ve competed in every game we’ve played apart from Ormskirk early on when Ian Robinson got a hundred and Simon Kerrigan bowled us out.”

Toole’s analysis deserves respect. A team capable of beating Fleetwood Hesketh and Northern, and of scoring well in excess of 200 on a couple of other occasions should not, one might think, be struggling to stay in the top flight.

However, consistency has eluded Recs this year and the captain knows they have also missed important opportunities to win games.

“We only needed seven runs to win with three wickets left in our second game against Northern and we ended up with a tie,” he said. “Also, we had seven overs at Hightown’s last pair and we just couldn’t separate them.”

It’s that failure to take chances which often leads to respectable teams finding themselves in relegation difficulties and Toole will be impressing on his players the need to avoid such prodigality this afternoon.

The Recs skipper also identified the games against Hightown and Wallasey as key matches over the next five weeks, but the clashes with Maghull, Prestatyn and Formby should also be vital in deciding where Toole and his team will be playing their cricket in 2009.

For the moment, though, the captain is happy with the effort of his players, especially that of the 22-year-old New Zealander Anthony Bullick, who has taken 39 wickets and reached the 500-run landmark in Recs’ six-wicket defeat to Ormskirk last Saturday.

“Anthony took a couple of weeks to settle but he’s now doing really well and his batting is maybe better than we expected,” said Toole.

Helping Bullick to compile defendable totals, though without scoring as heavily, have been Stuart Lyon and Steve Martindale, both of whom their skipper describes as “central to our batting”, but the Recs’ seam bowling effort has suffered without the nagging spells of a familiar figure.

“Steve Garvey’s in the side for his batting but a knee injury prevents him bowling, and we miss him,” said Toole, who has also taken every opportunity to promote Ruskin Drive’s younger brigade.

“Adam Tatlock is only 16 but he’s made an impact batting at five or six, and seamer Craig Woods took five for 33 in our win against Northern.

“At times we’ve had a side with three youngsters in it and maybe we expect too much of them.”

Toole’s view that the title is between Ormskirk and Bootle is probably widely-shared everywhere except Rake Lane and Moor Park, but both pace-setters have tricky matches this afternoon. Leaders Bootle travel to Maghull, where Ian Cockbain’s team has come unstuck in recent seasons, and Ormskirk entertain Hightown, who relish nothing so much as being underestimated.

FIXTRUES: TODAY: Business Assistance Liverpool Competition: ECB Premier League: Colwyn Bay v Northern, Formby v Lytham, Hightown v Ormskirk, Maghull v Bootle, New Brighton v Fleetwood Hesketh, Prestatyn v Wallasey, St Helens Recs v Southport and Birkdale. First Division: Highfield v Huyton, Liverpool v Newton-le-Willows, Northop Hall v Skelmersdale, Orrell Red Triangle v Ainsdale, Sefton Park v Rainford, Wavertree v Leigh, Wigan v St Helens.