IT WAS NO MORE THAN WE DESERVED
It was a challenging day, given that we went two goals behind and lost Jack Lester, but I can only sing the praises of these young players, who battled against the 2-0 deficit, battled against the wind and battled against a lot of negativity round the place, to come back and win 4-2. It is disappointing for me and a lot of us here, that there's a section of our supporters who feel that sarcastic cheering of our goalkeeper and general rabble-rousing is going to help us. We must be the only team in the Football League that's in a play-off place but gets lots of stick when it plays at home. Particularly from the goalkeeper's point of view: I don't know how people think it is helping. That's said: I was really proud of the players today.
It's a scenario that's happened many times this season: it seems that the first attempt on goal from the opposition ends up in the back of our net! There were a couple of mistakes in the first one, but it was the first time they'd been in our third. We then get done by a ball in behind, and Rochey made the decision to come out, and gave away a penalty. I think it was a penalty. So you're 2-0 down and up against it, but it was pleasing that we got back into it so soon. It might have been our first shot - that's one criticism I do have, that with a strong win in our favour, we tried to look for that extra pass, instead of hitting it and making the goalkeeper work. But from then on, we had lots of chances to get back on level terms before half time. Maybe it was a good thing that we didn't - in the second half we still had something to go for.
We got a bit of luck with the equaliser but the players responded to that. David Dowson was excellent and industrious when he came on, and along with Jamie Ward and Steve Fletcher, gave them a lot to deal with. It was pleasing to get the fourth goal: over the course of the game, that was no more than we deserved.
Jack Lester will be out for two to three weeks, at least. It's a proper mess. If his airways are damaged he'll have to have an operation, and that's a couple of weeks, at least. It is a massive blow: he's been our talisman but if the players show that character they showed today, we'll have a real chance.
