Nine men AFC Totton secure point

Sean McGlead spoke to Louis Langdown after his nine-man Stags showed tremendous character to get a 1-1 draw at Winchester City yesterday.

Louis you must be very proud of your players after the way they have battled for a point, after being down to 10 men from 38 minutes and 9 men from 64 minutes?

“Very proud mate yes. What you saw there was a team that were together and a team that are willing to work. You have to firstly have the capacity to run, and secondly the will to run. When you are two men down for a large chunk of the 2nd half after being a man down in the first half you are probably not expecting to get anything from the game. So, we are delighted that we got something in these circumstances, especially after we went a goal behind, but we wanted the 3 points and felt with 11, and with 10, that was available!”

I have to say Louis at half time, despite being a man down I had a gut feeling we could still win the game.

“So did I! They didn’t cause us that many problems. To be fair it wasn’t a pitch that you could play decent football on and credit to Winchester for getting the game on by the way. The fans wanted to see it played and we certainly wanted it played.”

“We missed Jack Masterton today in the middle and Tony’s come back earlier than expected from his injury and you could see he was maybe a little uncomfortable so credit to him. We were without one of our best players this season as he gets us on the ball.”

“We put Dave in there for his experience as we felt we missed that little bit of knowhow against Salisbury, and he’s been pushing for a league start, so it’s disappointing for our skipper to be sent off for two yellows in the same incident. Listen, he’s been sent off for dissent, and we hold our hands up and Dave will be more disappointed than anyone.”

“I am really aggrieved with Ian (Olivers) sending off, we are going to lose him for three games now after what was realistically a block tackle. The reactions of their bench, their fans and their players is what has got him sent off.”

“We will take it on the chin. Ian is not that sort of player, it was just a block tackle, it wasn’t high, it was on the ground, but late, it didn’t warrant a red card. Afterwards the ref felt it was excessive force, I’m not too sure what else Ian or any player is meant to do when going for a 50-50? I can’t very well ask a player not to tackle, or do you mind tackling less forcefully?”

Source AFC Totton / Sean McGlead