Thetford Town boss Matt Morton holds ‘no bitterness’ after rollercoaster play-off exit to Mulbarton Wanderers

Thetford Town boss Matt Morton said he holds ‘no bitterness’ to how his side exited the Thurlow Nunn League Premier Division Play-Offs on Tuesday night and believes his players will be ‘scary for opponents’ next season because of their recent experiences.

It has been a rollercoaster two weeks for the Brecklanders. Following their 2-0 semi-final win at third-placed Mulbarton Wanderers on May 4, Morton’s side’s Step 4 promotion hopes were thrown into doubt after they were expelled from the competition for fielding a banned player, Josh Wells, in the last-four tie.

The defender was meant to be serving the second match of a five-game ban for misconduct that he received when playing for Newmarket Town – their scheduled final opponents – in February.

But the Brecklanders successfully appealed the decision through the Football Association who reinstated them back into the play-offs.

They were ordered by the league to replay their last regular season game at home to Heacham before the semi-final which subsequently got cancelled, thought to be because their opponents could not raise a team.

It sent them back to a semi-final tie at Mulbarton on Tuesday night, but Thetford could not clinch a victory this time around and fell to an agonising 2-1 defeat.

Morton said: “I’m still happy it was done in the right way in the end. I’m obviously not happy about the result, but I’ve got no bitterness or anything other than disappointment and the normal upset you would expect.

“I’m glad that it was settled as it should have been. On the pitch and not off the pitch or in a committee meeting somewhere else.

“We went through what we went through over the last couple of weeks just to get justice, and to me, justice was that we weren’t removed from the competition and that the play-offs would be decided with what happens on the pitch.

“I don’t think I’m any more gutted having lost Tuesday than I would have been had we lost the original game three weeks before that.”

Morton said they ‘let themselves down in the first half-an-hour’ as they conceded two goals in the opening 35 minutes, but ‘threw the kitchen sink’ at the tie in the second period.

Thetford halved the deficit midway through the half via substitute Ryan Fuller – who is set to depart in the summer to become a manager – but could not salvage an all-important equaliser. The closest they came was in the sixth of eight minutes of stoppage time, when Dan Gilchrist’s effort was cleared off the line.

“Honestly, I think anyone watching would agree that I don’t think you’ll get many better second-half performances at this level than what we put in,” said the Thetford boss.

“If we have a good summer of retaining and recruiting, we’ll be an even better team next year than we have been this year and that will be a scary thought for opponents I think.

“To the Thetford fans and everyone associated with the club, stick with this group because they’re a great group of players, they’re mostly a very young group of players with a lot of talent and they’ll be all the better for the experience that they’ve had this year going into next year.”

Meanwhile, former chairman and club stalwart Mick Bailey was remembered ahead of Tuesday’s game with a poignant minute’s silence following his death.