New Yeovil boss Billy Rowley maintained his 100% record in the dugout as the Glovers picked up a brilliant 2-0 win at Hartlepool thanks to goals from Aaron Jarvis and Luke McCormick.
Rowley told BBC Somerset’s Mark Stillman how happy he was with the victory: “I’m really, really pleased for the lads. They’ve left it all out there today. It was, always going to be a tough game, especially with the pitch and the conditions. Hartlepool are excellent at what they do, [they] caused us some problems, but I felt for the most part, we were not comfortable, but we were defensively quite solid. We restricted them to probably some sort of half chances. But yeah, just a really pleasing afternoon for us.
“I think it’s always sweeter on these long journeys as well. You know, you never want to sit on a coach for five hours or down in the dumps and reviewing the performances and why you didn’t win or why you didn’t create so, first and foremost, I’m so, so happy for the fans. I thought brilliant today. They were almost louder than the Hartlepool [fans], although I thought they were excellent as well. It was a great game and atmosphere. So really happy for the fans to come here and get that win. And of course, the lads as well, I think long overdue a couple of wins.”
Aaron Jarvis opened the scoring for Yeovil in the 14th minute and Rowley was full of superlatives about the striker.
“He was excellent today. He was brilliant. He led the line. Well. We felt that we were going to try and build the game a little bit slower in the first half, and then always having the option of using Aaron in, like, throwing the ball up to him a little bit more directly. I thought he dealt with that excellently. I felt that we were getting a lot of joy from that, and then we decided to, I don’t know, maybe just get more bodies around him and make that a little bit too predictable at times. But yeah, the plan for Aaron to do that role for us today kind of worked for us.”
Hartlepool had only lost one match at home before today and the Glover haven’t won there since 2011 and Rowley waxed lyrical about the organisation of the team.
“It speaks a lot for the boys and their organisation. We worked a little bit on that yesterday. We reviewed that from a video this morning and they took everything we asked to a T. There’s also times where you have to think on the spot, and you know, the loud crowd here, we can’t always get information on so I thought Jake, Morgs and Fergie organised the boys in front of them expertly. We really restricted them to just sort of putting in long crosses towards the end. And Jed came in and claimed a few of those brilliantly. And what a keeper he is – unbelievable.”
The manager made changes from last week’s win over Boston and when about how his players reacted to the changes, Rowley said: “It’s so hard as a manager to not get players on the pitch. Sometimes the state of the game and even the environment and conditions dictates that so really, really pleased with the boys, I thought, Whitts defended well when he came on, Max [Joliffe], he does what he does. He covers ground, he put a few good balls in as well to spring some counters. Tav [was] brilliant when he came on, Jarvs pulled up with a calf injury a little bit and and the idea was to bring on Tav late in this game and use his subtle touches and skill to retain the ball for us and I thought he did that really well.”
On the scenes at the final whistle, Rowley was pragmatic, if not frustrated with what happened.
“The final whistle blew, and it erupted into a lot of joy for our players and a lot of despair for Hartlepool’s, which naturally caused a bit of friction between a few of them. I don’t think there was any malice in it. It’s just one of those things, but obviously really frustrated that Morgan got a straight red for that altercation. Look, I’m not going to let that overcast, the great day and the great win, but yeah, just a little frustrated that that happened at the end, but it is what is.”