Knaresborough Town unable to cap 'positive' season with West Riding County Cup final win

The Manse Lane outfit, who achieved their highest-ever NCEL Premier Division finish by placing eighth, were beaten 4-0 by Pontefract Collieries in the West Riding County Cup final on Bank Holiday Monday.

Parkes’ men equalled their best points tally since they reached the ninth tier of English football, chalking up a tally of 60 courtesy of 17 wins and nine draws from their 38 games.

Thus, the Boro boss was satisfied with his team’s overall performance over the course of the year, and said that reaching a cup final was an achievement in itself.

"Our highest finish and points tally is brilliant, I think that you can call it a successful season, we are certainly very positive about it,” he said.

"Throw in the cup final as well and I think that everyone at the club can feel pleased with our efforts.

"We ended up two points off sixth position, and I think if we’d finished in the top six it would have been a significant overachievement when you look at the budgets in this division and compare ours with some other teams, and their access to players.

"We’ll reflect now on what we could have done better and we know that we dropped a lot of points that we should have taken. But the aim is to come back stronger next season and see where that takes us.”

Pontefract, who play their football a tier higher than Knaresborough in Division One East of the Northern Premier League, took the lead after 16 minutes of Monday’s County Cup final through Adam Haw.

Jack Steers made it 2-0 on the stroke of half-time, before goals from Bailey Thompson and Michael Dunn wrapped things up after the break.