Trophy hunters hailed by chairman

Workington's joint chairman John Mackay has been hailing the run of the EVO-STIK League's Reds in the Buildbase FA Trophy in the build-up to Tuesday night's replay at Bromley for a place in the quarter-finals of Non-League's showpiece cup competition.

With either Spennymoor Town or East Thurrock United awaiting them in the last eight if they can get past the National South side in the third round replay, Mackay heaped praise on the Reds on Tuesday morning before setting off to Kent with the team on a near 700 mile round trip.

Nearly 1,000 fans at Borough Park on Saturday saw the Reds pegged back by an equaliser with only 11 minutes to go and a proud Mackay, pictured, told the timesandstar.co.uk he was keeping his "fingers crossed" for better luck.

The Cumbrian club's joint chairman alongside Don Blackwell said: “It’s just a pity we aren’t already through and then we could enjoy the draw but this is an incentive. So, we will all be keeping our fingers crossed for tonight and then we can see what happens. It will be a tough trip down there but the lads have done a great job so far just to get here.”

Reds joint managers Lee Andrews and David Hewson were still sweating over two or three players ahead of the 7.45pm kick-off and predicting a different style of match when the clubs locked horns again.

“Hopefully, we will have a pre-match meal and get to the ground ready to go,” said Andrews. "It’s going to be difficult going down there to get a result but we know we’re capable of doing that. We normally do better against the better teams but I think this will be a different game.

“I think they will look to get the ball down and play a little bit more on their pitch but those sort of games often suit us. We will go down there with confidence taken from Saturday and the belief we can get a result.”

Like a number of EVO-STIK League clubs, Bromley play their home games on an artificial turf surface but Andrews was unconcerned as the club headed south.

He added: “It is a different surface to play on but we train on it and it can just be an excuse sometimes if you don’t win a game. We just have to go and play on it as we would when we train.”

The EVO-STIK League's final flag-bearers in this season's competition will bank £8,000 in prize money if they go through with another £10,000 up for grabs for the winners of the quarter-final ties when they are played over the weekend of Saturday 24 February.

Image courtesy of thefa.com

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