First-team manager Danny Grainger says he was ‘over the moon’ as Reds came back to beat Lancaster City 4-3 yesterday.

Borough Park welcomed back Saturday football with a wet and wild seven-goal spectacle in which we trailed twice to the NPL Premier Division side.

Scott Allison’s double along with goals from Brad Carroll and Dan Wordsworth signed off our seven-game pre-season in style, giving Grainger’s men a platform heading into the new season.

Speaking to BBC Radio Cumbria post-match, the manager said: “The four goals themselves were good goals.

“We took them well but other than that I was really pleased with the performance.

“The three goals we conceded were quite sloppy, I think it was an eagerness to win the ball back instead of maybe shadowing people into the areas we wanted but that’s something we’ll work on.

“We’re over the moon with the result, pre-season or not, we want to win games.

“It showed today from being 0-2 and 2-3 down to come back!”

Lancaster lead through a Charlie Bailey double and then captain Andy Teague put them back in front after the hour mark.

That showed how difficult the men from the Giant Axe made it, which Grainger acknowledged, saying: “There’ll be games where we’ll get to roll the ball around nice and tidily, have it all our own way but there’ll be games where have to dig in like today.

“We didn’t have much time on the ball, they pressed us well and we made mistakes.

“The boys ran themselves into the ground, running from one box to the other, making tackles – we never lost a 50-50 after the first 25 minutes.

“So that was the real pleasing thing.”

Allison’s double and link-up play with Tuesday’s hat-trick hero Ruben Jerome showed promising signs, something else he spoke about.

“Scotty knows what he is and I know what Scotty is,” he said.

“He’s an out-and-out goalscorer and when you look at those two, we’ve got a lot of goals at the top end of the pitch.

“We’ll be looking forward to seeing them linking up throughout the season.”

A few of our players were in the wars as two players departed earlier than expected due to injury.

There’s also still another key absentee, whom Grainger gave us an update on.

“Dav Symington, we’ve lost him for a few weeks,” he revealed.

“I was hoping he was going to be back next week but there’s still pain in his ankle, and we lost Jordan Little late on today.

“Hopefully, he’s just jarred it but it could be a reoccurrence of an old knee injury which he’s not too confident about so we’ll see how we look ahead of Knaresborough next week.”

Finally, quizzed by Cumbria Sport on the squad that’ll starting the new campaign, the boss didn’t rule out bolstering his options but let us know his faith in our young prospects currently in the reserves.

“We’ve got a competitive 20 and that’s without any of our younger lads,” he explained.

“I’ve got at least five or six from the Development Team who’ll step into the first-team environment with no problem at all.

“Worst case scenario, I’ll have to ask for some favours and get some loans in.

“We’re happy with where we are at the moment, if there’s something that’s going to improve us, we’ll look at it.

“I won’t be bringing people in for the sake of it, especially when I’ve got young guys who I trust.”

Kick-off next Saturday at Knaresborough is at 3pm. 75 away tickets are available from the club office from Tuesday (open 10am until 2pm).

We hope to see you there!