Ruth: We made hard work of Burgess Hill tie

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Charlie Hanson

2025-01-08T12:30+00:00

Joe Knight captained Albion against Burgess Hill. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Men's under-21s head coach Shannon Ruth believes his team made hard work of their win over Burgess Hill in the Sussex Senior Cup on Tuesday night.

Following a goalless 90 minutes, Albion won the resulting penalty shootout 5-4 to reach the quarter-finals, where they will face Whitehawk.

Shannon, how do you feel your team got on?

"It was hard work. I thought Burgess Hill were really good, they setup really well. We struggled a little bit with the man-to-man marking in the first half – we huffed and puffed.

"For us it's a really good lesson that in football you have to be humble and you have to respect every opponent. For our young players, that's what makes this competition really useful because for them it might be human nature to underestimate the opponent. Burgess Hill were a really good example of why you can't do that.

Shannon Ruth's team will take on Whitehawk in the quarter-finals. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

"We know being from the Premier League that anyone can beat anyone. That's the case when we come and play this competition, because the fixture and the opponent look very different to our normal opponent.

"That's what makes the development of this competition so good because for the players in there, some of them are 16-years-old, they've never faced a situation like today, so for that reason, the game's a really, really good match for us."

In what way didn't it go quite to plan?

"I don't think we control the rhythm well enough. Probably because of some environmental stuff, like there's no multi-ball there. If you look at the game, the ball in play time has been really reduced, but we didn't contribute to that either.

"We didn't get the ball in quickly enough. When we had free-kicks, we didn't play it, we played to their tempo which didn't allow us to build any rhythm. When you're a possession based team, whether it's our first team, our under-21s, our under 18s, it's about rhythm and momentum and tempo to the play.

Hugo Fisher made the only save of the penalty shootout to ensure Albion reached the next stage of the competition. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

"The game was probably a little bit too slow which really helped them more than it helped us. The second half was slightly better. But we didn't create enough to really work their goal, which is disappointing."

The main positive will be getting through to the next stage though?

"We're delighted to get through, because we always want to be in the final stages and we haven't done that in a few years, so to get through is a positive thing for sure."

We're in January now, are you expecting a busy period for the under-21s?

"It's probably eventful from a loan out perspective. We've got a relatively large group so we're expecting a fair few loans to go out. Gordon [Greer] and Sam [Baldock] have already started that process, so by the time the window's shut I expect the group to look fairly different to what it looks like now.

"That's the beauty of the age group, every six months the team evolves and that's the exciting bit because we're constantly looking at who's next."