Hot-shots hailed as title contenders

North Ferriby United winger Russell Fry believes The Villagers are well on the road to promotion, writes Lewis Deakin.

The league leaders won 2-0 at Stafford's Marston Road on Saturday and Fry heaped praise on the club’s attacking talent who now lead the Evo-Stik NPL's scoring charts with 29 goals from 13 matches.

Fry said: "This team has some fantastic strikers and if we can continue to create chances as we did today then we have a real chance of achieving promotion."

North Ferriby extended their lead at the top by five points after overcoming a lacklustre Stafford Rangers with Fry describing the performance as 'solid'.

The Villagers have now taken 28 points from a possible 30 and Fry added: "Stafford is always a difficult place to come and we did well to negate a pitch that isn’t designed for our passing game."

The winger, who scored in his side’s sixth consecutive league victory, admits that his own strike was 'fortunate'.

"It was lucky for us that I was in the right place at the right time but sometimes you need that bit of luck to succeed," said Fry. "Liam King has headed the ball against the post and it has come back and I’ve just reacted quickest to put it in the net."

Fry's manager Billy Heath reckons he couldn't have asked for more from his team at the weekend as they cemented their place at the top of the Evo-Stik NPL Premier Division.

He said: "When you come away from home and keep a clean sheet I can't ask any more from my players. It was a functional performance. It wasn’t pretty but we ground out the result.

"The lads knew it was going to be a tough fixture against Stafford so we had to adapt our style of play. I thought that for the first twenty minutes Stafford Rangers did ever so well without really creating anything decisive in the final third, but goals change games and once we scored first the game changed. We then looked really bright."

Heath believes his strike force is now good enough to target the league title.

"What we did with the club at the start of the season was sign quality players and now we have three great strikers who all scored twenty goals each last season," he added. "We are scoring goals and we are keeping plenty of clean sheets. That is what we need to do if we want to win this league."