Billy Heath described his sides performance as ‘the perfect script’ as FC Halifax Town dug out a hard 2-0 victory away at Gloucester City.
Goals from Alex Simmonds and Liam King via the spot kick make it five wins in the last six games for the Shaymen, and Heath believes the togetherness in the squad is the strongest yet so far this season.
“I thought today was an excellent away performance. If you were to write a script out of how you would ideally like to see an away game pan out, then that’s how I would see it going down” said Heath as he spoke to Shaymen Player HD after the game.
“We were extremely well disciplined. We know Gloucester are very bright on the ball when they have possession, with lots of interchanges and I think they’ve been one of the best teams we’ve played this season.”
“Having said that I don’t think they created a lot, most of their efforts were long distance which Drench dealt with comfortably. But as team I thought we were excellent in keeping focused and maintaining our shape, especially considering the changes we had to make” said Heath.
The performance may have been how the Shaymen boss wanted, but one doubts he had 3 forced substitutions due to the injury in his perfect away plan.
“We lost Daniel (Hone) pretty early on, so Hotte came on to slot in in defence for us and I thought he was outstanding for us.” said Heath.
“He’d only had a little bit of game time last week so for him to come in today and play the best part of 60-70 mins in the manner that he did in his non-natural position (granted he has covered for us before at centre-half on occasion) is incredible. He injected a bit of pace into our game and was excellent alongside Garner” Heath added.
The half-time tactics were forced to be altered before the ref had blown his whistle as Nathan Lynch was unable to walk onto the field from the tunnel.
“Then we lost Lynch at half-time through a dead leg. He was trying to keep it going in the dressing room and said to me and the rest of the staff that he was good to get back out there. Soon as he steps out back on the pitch before the second half’s even got going he’s signalled across to me that it had gone so we brought on Jake Hibbs” said Heath.
“People think Hibbs is ready made and already there but he’s not played a vast amount of games and is still finding his feet”, admitted Heath, “But I thought his performance was good”.
“Then we had Jordan Sinnott who picked up a calf problem with just over 10 minutes to go so we had to move Kevin Roberts into midfield and bring Moyo on and credit to Kevin he slotted into that role seamlessly”.
On-loan signing Alex Simmonds continued to impress in the Shaymen colours as he opened the scoring with a fine header.
“Simmons is very sharp around the penalty area. The ball from the long throw was flicked on well by Denton and Alex is the first to react to the ball dropping in the box and he’s got himself another goal”.
That’s what he’s good at given he’s played as a centre forward before so I’m delighted for him” said Heath.
Despite the positional switches the team gave a stellar performance as FC Halifax Town close to within a point of the play-off positions.
“When things like that happen, it shows to me that the togetherness of the team is strong” said Heath.
“There was a number of players out there today that had to sacrifice their own game to chip in and help get the result for the team. Josh Macdonald did that, Alex Simmons on the other flank was doing the same and we had Liam King in virtually a central-defensive midfield role during the second half, which isn’t his natural game at all but at times that is what you have to do to get the 3 points” Heath added.
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