Richard Peniket admits the FC Halifax Town squad did not perform well enough to retain their place in the Conference.

FC Halifax Town: Bad start cost us dear, says Peniket
FC Halifax Town v Boreham Wood at the Shay.FC Halifax Town v Boreham Wood at the Shay.
FC Halifax Town v Boreham Wood at the Shay.

Town were relegated back to the Conference North after three seasons in the top-tier of non-league football after their 1-1 draw with Macclesfield on Saturday.

The Halifax forward believes the blame must primarily lay at the door of the players for The Shaymen’s disastrous campaign.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We all have to look at ourselves. Have performances been good enough all season? You’d say probably not.

“I think we only had something like 10 points from the first half of the season and had to go on a really good run, but we’ve still gone down after that run, which just shows what a bad start we had.

“If you take the form we showed over the second half of the season over the whole campaign I don’t think we’d have gone down.”

The striker, who recovered from a cruciate ligament injury that kept him out of action for nearly a year to take part in the final three months of the campaign, feels the 11 new faces last summer were also a factor, but couldn’t fault the squad’s attitude overall.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“There’s a lot of quality in the side but maybe the fact that there were a lot of new signings in the summer didn’t help,” he said.

“It took a long time for everyone to gel and that was hard.

“For effort I can’t knock anyone for not trying and giving their all because everyone in the squad did.

“I don’t think I’ve hit form since I came back from injury but at least I can look myself in the mirror and say I gave it my best.”

Halifax have an option to extend Peniket’s contract for another season, but the striker admits he is unsure where his future lies.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Before then, he is convinced the squad will recover from relegation for the FA Trophy final on May 22.

He added: “Hopefully next week once the dust has settled we’ll be in a better frame of mind for that.

“It’s a big occasion and it would be a big achievement for the club if we could go and win the FA Trophy.

“We’ve still got to go there with positivity and hopefully the fans will be right behind us and we can pick ourselves up for that.

“Obviously we’d love to have gone there having stayed up, but it wasn’t to be.”