Abbo and Tommo ‘Immensely Proud’

Hinckley AFC’s management team Carl Abbott and Paul Tomlinson said they were ‘immensely proud’ of their side’s performance despite the 2-1 defeat to Long Eaton United.

Due to only having two defenders on the substitutes’ bench, AFC’s starting line up played for the whole two hours of the tie and Abbo felt that the eleven players on the pitch gave their all to win the game.

He said: ‘I’m immensely proud of the football club today. The supporters have forgiven us for Saturday (losing 4-3 to Heath Hayes) and come out in numbers singing loud and proud.

‘I said to the lads after Saturday that initially, I want to work with the lads that I trust the most to move on from Saturday and that explains the slim numbers today, although it was a little slimmer than I’d have liked.

‘That had an effect later in the game, but the lads have done themselves proud and the club proud. We were better than Long Eaton today and they’re a really good side. I watched them a few weeks ago in preparation for this game and they’re an excellent side.

‘I felt the draw was a little unkind but I thought we were better than them and our failure to take good chances in the first half came back to rue us.

‘I can’t overstate how bad that decision from the linesman was (for the winning goal) because that kid (Brad Wells) was three or four yards offside. It wasn’t even borderline.

‘And worse still, the linesman is nowhere near the line of the play anyway and he did it time and time again leading up to the goal.

‘It’s criminal that we should lose that game that way, but we did.’