MARSKE manager Carl Jarrett says that his team must be “much better” in their second leg FA Vase semi final tie against Stockton Town.

The Seasiders, the favourites for the competition, produced one of their worst performance of the season in the first leg last Saturday, and were second best as Stockton came out on top thanks to two first half goals, and handed them the advantage for place at Wembley in the final on May 20.

"As far as I’m concerned, six of our big-name players didn’t perform last week, and they owe the club a big performance," he said. 

"The good thing is, that they want to put that right. We’ve looked at the goals we conceded, and they were down to two sloppy mistakes, which was hard to take because in the last three months, we’ve only conceded four or five goals.

“Make no mistake about it, this is the biggest game in the club’s history, and one that we must win. We must come off the field with no regrets, unlike last week.

“We spent 20 minutes in the changing room after the game last week, talking about where we went wrong. It’s fair to say that the performance came as a big shock to us, we didn’t expect that to happen.”

Marske had plenty of possession last Saturday and created plenty of chances, but most of them from outside the 18-yard box.

“We were like a frustrating Arsenal, overplaying it too much in certain areas. We must be better in Stockton’s penalty area and finish our chances," Jarrett said. 

"We’ve checked the video from last week, and we had 18 shots at goal, 12 of them were on target but we didn’t score. Stockton had five shots at goal, three of them were on target and they scored twice – so we must do better in that respect.

“Maybe some of our players froze last Saturday, and didn’t handle some of the atmosphere. They weren’t used to people breathing down their necks and shouting at them.

“We’ve had a good week in training, and worked on a few things and we’re going back there knowing that we can do better. The first goal is going to be really important, but we won’t be going gung-ho to try and get it. If we get it, then Stockton will get nervous, if Stockton get it, then it will be an uphill battle for us.”

Stockton manager Micky Dunwell says that his team will approach this game in exactly the same way as the first.

“We certainly won’t be sitting on the lead, it’s not our game to do something like that. The longer the game goes without a goal, the more likely Marske are to commit men forward, and hopefully we can take advantage of that on the break," he said. 

"I expect Marske to make changes after their performance last week, they might even change their formation. The first goal will be massive, hopefully it will be us who gets it.

“We’ve worked on a few things in training this week to try and improve a couple of things, but I don’t think we’ll be changing much. We won’t be changing the way we play – it worked well in the first leg, so why should we change it for the second?”

The Anchors are on the verge of completing a remarkable rise from nowhere. Just three years ago, they were playing in front of just 30 people, and now they’re on the verge of playing at Wembley in front of 30,000.

“I don’t think the lads will freeze for the second leg, because if they were going to freeze, I think they would have done last Saturday when it was Marske’s home game and there were more Marske supporters in the ground," said Dunwell. 

"I think they’ll be fine this week because there’ll be more Stockton supporters in the crowd than last week cheering us on. We could have sold this game out two or three times over.

“Our togetherness will be strong as it has been all the way through this run. Before the game last week, I pulled the lads around in a huddle before the match kicked off and I told them to forget about who we were playing, and not to overthink it. They wouldn’t have thought too much about the teams we played in the previous rounds, so it was the same again as far as I was concerned.

“We’ve tried to stay cool and collected this week, and we must go into Saturday’s game as if it’s 0-0 again. Certainly, none of the players are thinking that we’ve finished the job. Wembley is within touching distance for us now, but the tie is still in the balance as far as we’re concerned.”

Marske assistant manager Ian Clark says that they must show more desire.

“Our players have got to possess more decisiveness, more desire to run behind the defence and desire to look after the ball,” said the former Hartlepool and Darlington player," he said. 

“We need to move the ball quicker into spaces and be better in the final third. We’ve got to have more movement, more desire, and be more clinical in the final third.

“We didn’t play to our capabilities, and that was the disappointing thing in such a big game that we didn’t perform in the way that we know we can. We had most of the ball which we expected, but we didn’t hurt them enough.

“If we produce the same performance as we did last Saturday, then we’ll be out of the competition, no two ways about it. If we do produce a better performance, then we’ll give ourselves half a chance of going through.”

Stockton Town defender Adam Nicholson has been at the club since the age of eight, and said: “We were obviously played with our first performance because everything went well, to beat Marske 2-0 was something a lot of the people in the ground last Saturday didn’t expect. We did what we needed to do last Saturday, we’ve got to do it all again on Saturday.

“We’ll go into it as if it’s a new game. We’re going out there to try and win again. We won’t set up for a 0-0 draw or take a 1-0 loss, we’ve never done that in the past and we won’t change now. It’s not us. We’ll just manage the game as it goes along, we have nothing to fear.

“The interest in the game is phenomenal -- we could have sold many more tickets than what we have. It will be the biggest crowd we’ve ever played in front of, and it’s remarkable considering that we were playing in front of only 30 people a few years ago.

“Everyone knows that we’re only half way there and what the score was early in the season when they beat us 3-0 in the league at our place. The job is only half done.”