Luke Waterfall insists there is no issue over Shrewsbury captaincy and praises 'brilliant' Mat Sadler
Stand-in captain Luke Waterfall has heaped praise on the ‘brilliant’ Mat Sadler after taking the armband from Shrewsbury’s longest-serving player.
Waterfall, a summer signing from Lincoln, opened his goalscoring account for Salop with the third as John Askey’s men defeated Barnsley 3-1 at Montgomery Waters Meadow.
The surprise victory helped ease the scrutiny on under-pressure boss Askey after more discontent at the decision to drop fans’ favourite Sadler for Waterfall.
Askey said Sadler was left out as Waterfall, James Bolton and Omar Beckles better suited a back three.
Waterfall hailed Sadler’s reaction after the duo had a chat regarding the team selection on Monday
“I’ve done the (captain) role before. It’s nothing new but I’m happy to take it,” said the 28-year-old.
“Sads has been fantastic, I had a conversation with him on Monday and he’s an absolutely top man. There’s no problem there – he’s brilliant.
“We’ve got a big squad. It’s good, healthy competition. You need competition to keep people on their toes. It’s always a good thing.
“He was the first person to hold a conversation with me when I walked through the door. He’s been a top man.
“He’s my ‘roomie’ now when we go away from home in the hotel, we room together and stuff like that. He played a big part in me settling in here. He was the first to come and introduce himself as club captain. We had a little chat and he’s brilliant.”
Waterfall said the Town players and boss were ‘desperate’ to turn round their form after back-to-back defeats had cranked up the pressure.
“The lads are desperate, the manager is desperate. We’re playing our hearts out out there. I’m just hoping we’re going to put a run together now to catapult us further up,” he added.
“We’ve got to keep building starting on Saturday. We can’t get too carried away, we said after the win that it was just one win, we’ve got to keep building on it.
“If we work as hard as we did, for me that was the most important thing, the work rate – I’m sure the running stats will be right up there.
“That’s where it starts. Lee (Angol) and Fay (Fejiri Okenabirhie) ran their socks off and everybody follows them.”
