Comments from Leamington manager Paul Holleran after his side defeated Hereford 2-1 this afternoon.
‘I thought they started the game really well, Hereford, and their system got on top of us in the early stages, but to be fair I thought our first half performance was excellent after that, from probably ten to forty five minutes,’ said the manager after the game.
‘We had to get the ball wide to get the overload, which we did, especially down the right hand side. The two wide men did really well. They always want to get chalk on their boots, they want to get in one v one situations and get crosses in, but the two boys today; how we’ve dealt with Hereford’s system effectively today or tried to deal with it effectively, was the two wide men really sacrificing themselves and becoming inverted tens when we didn’t have the ball, try and get the blocks in and play from there. We did it really well in the first half and probably deserved the lead; maybe could have had another goal.
‘Like the first half, we’ve started the second half poorly; they were really on the front foot. It’s a great goal from the kid, and you’re then thinking which way is this going to go, but we dug in, got through those fifteen minutes and we always knew that if we could get our front three involved in the game and the full backs stepping into play and that sort of came down that right hand side, it was an overload again. It was about trying to get distance on their passes and bypass the diamond, which we did, and it was a great finish from Henry. He’s having a really strong period at the moment. The game levelled out a bit then and they threw everything at us. The Referee’s had a strong game. I thought Josh was close to the boy, but it did strike his arm.
‘A couple of weeks ago at Spennymoor, when Callum Hawkins was down in the dumps I said to him in the dressing room you can count your mistakes on one hand, and I know for a fact you’ll save us again on more than one occasion like you already have over the last eighteen months, and he has done again today. It’s not just the save - the ball went out for a throw in, so he’s fisted it away from all the danger.
‘I think for our performance in the first half, and patches in the second, and for our counter attacking play,
'I think we just about deserved it today. It was great to see Dan Turner back on the scoresheet - I think that will do him the world of good. After a strong start from them it was good that we got the goal. In the second half you wouldn’t know which way the game was going to go. The system they had is very strong structurally, very strong centrally, and you could see that in the game we struggled at times. There’s an overload in there you see, but we got the overload in the wide areas. Our goals have come from those overloads, and there’s has come from their overload in the middle of the park. Just to get over the line with a 2-1 was great, two home wins over Christmas is fantastic.'