Dave Onions heaped praise on Marske United for another battling performance against Newton Aycliffe at the Ashcourt Group Stadium.

The assistant boss admitted it was a tough place to go, hailing the resilience of his players to work through a tough patch, and take four points off two strong teams.

It was an own goal which earned Marske a draw against the play-off hopefuls. Dom Joynes’ corner was turned in at the near post by Harry Brumwell.

Andrew Nelson did level matters in the second half following a scramble in the box.

Still, Dave Onions was delighted to take a point. Marske faced six successive defeats ahead of victory over Kendal Town at the weekend, and for the assistant boss, the resilience to bounce back is what’s pleasing.

“I think first and foremost, I’m extremely proud of our players.” He said.

“I’m proud of the work ethic that they put together, and I think it’s really hard to knock the effort that they’re putting in. I think we’ve looked together as a team in the last couple of games.

“We know results haven’t been great over the last month, and we’ve hit a bad spell. We’ve had players missing, we’ve had injuries. It’s been a tough run of games, but that’s no excuse.

“I just couldn’t be prouder of the players for working through it. As I said, we’ve had a positive result on Saturday, and it was really important that we backed that up with a decent performance tonight.

“We know Newton Aycliffe is a tough place, it always is. It’s a very big pitch. They’re always physical, they’re always fit. They just know how to win games of football.

“I think our lads came here and we matched them. I thought for long spells of the game, we were comfortable on the ball. We played in the right areas and we caused problems.

“I think that’s the most pleasing thing. Over the last few weeks, we haven’t really looked a threat, but I thought tonight that we did.

“I thought the link up play in the final third was excellent. We had some great chances.

“We could’ve scored another couple of goals. Just before they scored, Finn’s hit the post. I think that’s a game-changer. At 2-0, I think that game would’ve been ours.

“What’s most pleasing for me is the willingness of the lads to dig deep.

“It would’ve been easy to throw the towel in after that run of games that we had, but these lads haven’t done that, and I’m really proud of them.

“We rolled our sleeves up and we did what we needed to do. We had to grind out a result. On the back of three points on Saturday, this is a really good result.“