Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Ian Randall following a narrow 2-1 defeat, Yeovil Town manager Billy Rowley expressed his frustration with the result while maintaining that his side’s overall performance was “decent enough” given the extreme circumstances.
With 50 mph gusts heavily dictating the flow of the match, Rowley explained how drastically the weather altered the team’s game plan.
“My initial feelings are the performance was, was decent enough, given the conditions. I thought both teams played pretty well. It’s a game of two halves literally when you’re kicking into 50 mile an hour gusts the second half… the game plan’s very different, the way you attack looks very different,” Rowley said.
“Credit to Altrincham, I thought they played well. I thought they were decent, but if you look at, they’ve created a few good chances, but the two goals are literally probably created by the, the conditions and the wind. So that is what it is, and, full credit to them for their victory. Yeah, [we’re] really disappointed to lose that game because I don’t think we deserved to.”
With the score locked at 1-1 heading into the closing stages, neither side was willing to settle for a draw. Rowley attempted to inject fresh momentum;
“I tried to make some attacking subs to get, you know, a fresh Westy [Westbrooke] on the pitch, a fresh Mason [Obeng], Owen Dean, fresh to run in behind,” he explained.
“Archie had a really good chance one-on-one, potentially could have squared it… on another day that goes in and you’re two-one up with ten minutes to play”.
The defeat was compounded by a straight red card for Ben Radcliffe, resulting in a three-match suspension.
Rowley was quick to defend the player’s stellar contribution:
“He’s been absolutely brilliant… he was literally playing, I think, a 9.5 out of 10 until that moment”
“It’s difficult to, you know, sometimes keep your foot in on that pitch and, and Jos [Barker] as well been superb, but he’s got the line of the ball and then in the last second it gusts over his head, he’s tried to punch it over and, and they score from that. So, two real random moments that don’t happen really on another day. But we’ll take it on the chin. We’ll accept the loss and we’ll, we’ll try and improve.
Refusing to dwell too long on the setback, Rowley and his squad are already shifting their focus to Tuesday’s upcoming fixture against Hornchurch.
“I’m not going to dwell on this too much. I think it’s important that we as a club, just said to the lads as well obviously we play Hornchurch on Tuesday. I can’t really, I can’t really fault anyone’s effort. I can’t fault some of our quality and chances we had. We’ve obviously given up two really sloppy individual goals… onto Hornchurch”