Joey, this is our 45th post-match interview of the season. How on earth do you describe what we just witnessed?
It’s tough. Just character of players. We kept going, it wasn’t our best day and we can certainly do things a lot better. We just stayed in it.
I spoke to them at half time about the following and it’s days like today that from my first coaching journey, I couldn’t turn around and say ‘You’ve got to do it for these fans’. They’ve travelled in enormous numbers again.
At half time, that was what we were talking about, making the fans proud and giving a great account of ourselves. We felt our fanbase would recognise that, but to win 4-3 in the manner we’ve done sends those Gasheads home saying ‘I was there’ again.
So proud of the players, Amazing character. I’m so proud of our football club. To travel in those numbers is special.
How do you account for being 3-1 down and how do you account for the comeback. What sparked it?
We were just sloppy in moments. We had a really good chance for James Connolly and probably should have took the lead when the keeper drops it. They pretty much go up the other end and score.
That’s probably on me, to be honest. I rushed Josh Grant back into the game. He’s only trained for a couple of days but I thought we were better for having Josh in there.
I’ve thrown him in a little bit too soon, so that’s on me. The first couple of goals, I’ve got to blame my team selection for that.
But at half time I said ‘We have to get the next goal, who knows what can happen with our fans’. We got the next goal and then we managed to give them another goal.
Most normal teams possibly give up at that moment, and again it just flips over to our lads’ character. They never gave up.
We ended up with Paul Coutts at centre-half. It was strange, but we just went for it. We wanted to win the game and we got rewarded for that.
Aaron Collins got a hat-trick, the first of your tenure.
Yeah, and I’ve absolutely got after him at half time for not being in the scoring area. I know he’s not your stereotypical number nine but we’ve been working all year about just being in the scoring area. Things will drop to you.
He’s scored three in that area. I’m not taking credit for his first hat-trick because he’s knocked the ball in the net, but it does help me from a coaching perspective. That’s what I’ve been telling him. ‘Just be in there, good things happen for strikers in there’.
Because he’s so used to playing as a number 10 as a kind of link player, he still has 24 years of not being in there and as soon as he realises there are 15 or 16 tap-ins in there I think he’ll start to make a lot more money than he currently is.
I think at one point, you were eighth in the live league table but suddenly you’re level on points with Northampton going into that last game of the season.
Yeah, Mangs was keeping me abreast of the results in there (the dugout), which wasn’t very helpful. We were out of the play-offs and then we were in the play-offs.
As I said all along, it’s all about us. We can sit here and smile know, but we know we’ve got to improve.
We can sit here and smile now but we knew this was a tough place to come. They had nothing to play for and it was strange to see a team who can maybe finish 17th or 18th wasting time and running the clock out, but they want to win the game themselves and do as well as they can for their football club.
To see the lads overcome that and not be happy with 3-3, because 3-3 meant we controlled our own destiny next week, so it would have been easy to say ‘OK, that will do us, we’ve had a bad period in the game where we’ve conceded goals and we’ll take the point and get out of here’, but we didn’t. We felt we could win it, we kept pushing on and we got our reward.
Paul Coutts is in such good form. It will be a blow that you’re going to be without him next week. What happened for his red card?
I just asked him in there. The lad, he said, barged him in the back and he’s a bit bigger than him and grabbed hold of him.
But you can’t give the referee the option. You’ve got to stay incredibly disciplined and it’s tough in the midst of the emotion and the occasion.
I thought it was strange for them, I don’t know what they have to gain. They’re going on their holidays in seven days’ time and the season is finished and they’re trying to get our lad sent off, who could still have semi-finals or play-offs or whatever.
We’ll have to learn those lessons. Couttsy’s disappointed in there but sitting behind that you’ve got 92-cap Glenn Whelan, who’s been kicking his heels desperate for an opportunity, so it’s not like we’re putting a 19-year-old kid in there.
Whelo has done really well when he has gone in there and gives me that option. I might go that way, I might not. I might drop Billy (Elliot Anderson) in there and bring one of the wingers in. I thought Luke Thomas was superb when he came on today.
We had Harry Anderson and Sammy Nicholson at right-back and left-back to finish and Coutts at centre-half. It’s not the way you plan it, but we went for the win and we got it.
The Rovers fans will think they can fly tonight. What a game to look forward to against Scunthorpe now, no matter what happens.
Yeah, and the microcosm of our season as encapsulated in that game. It really was, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
They key for us was getting the three points, whether that was a scabby 1-0 or the most entertaining 4-3 in recent memory for some of the Gasheads.
They lifted me up and I was going ‘There’s one to go, can I get down?’ Someone’s nicked my cap, I think my wallet went and, for my insurance, I had a Rolex on that’s gone as well.
I’m just made up for them. They came out in their numbers. At Blackpool, we spoke this time last year and I was talking to you about giving them a team to be proud of. I had to call it what it was, I had to call a spade a spade about what was going on at the club.
Thankfully, Wael and the guys at the club believed in what I was talking about and allowed me the time and the patience when we were struggling to change the course of the club’s trajectory.
Without the 12th man there, those fans, we’re just another football club. We’ve come to Rochdale, three hours away or whatever and with the cost, and we’ve got more fans in the stadium than the home team. I’ve seen that before at Olympique Marseille and Newcastle, but you don’t see that in the fourth tier of English football, you just don’t.
I’m pleased for them and it sets us up for an exciting final Saturday at the Mem. Soccer Saturday could be interesting in the last part of that game.
Robbie Stockdale was in your technical area after that skirmish. What did he have to say?
I’m not sure. Me and Rob are sound and there is no issue between us two.
He was talking to Mangs. I think they were just having a discussion about their players’ timewasting. I don’t think Robbie agreed with it.
Boys will be boys.
My first instinct when the winning goal went in was to look straight at the assistant. What was your reaction?
I was the same. Exactly the same because I knew it was a flick in.
We’ve got the ability to have the replay on the side two seconds later and I knew straight away then he was comfortably onside.
It was harem-scarem. The first thing I did was look down to the linesman. He signalled it was a goal straight away and I think at that point Luca Hoole and Jay “Carbs”, our nutrition guy, rugby tackled me and I ended up on my backside.
In the first half, you didn’t get Elliot Anderson on the ball as much as you like. He didn’t necessarily influence the first three goals in the second half, but by getting him on the ball more it did seem to open up more avenues for attack elsewhere?
For sure, and I keep saying to the lads that you’ve got to systematically break teams down. I believe they start to get deeper and we start to create spaces because they’ve chased the ball a lot of the game.
Credit to Rochdale, if anyone was worried about it being a dead rubber for them and Northampton or the other teams would look at it and think they were going to roll over and get their bellies tickled, I think they did superb for everybody. They played as hard as they can play, they were desperate to beat us, wasting time, running the clock down, diving on the floor to get people sent off.
That’s what everybody should do. You should try to win every game for your football club.
The real focus has to go on our players. What a team we’ve got, what a group of man, I’m so proud and pleased for them.
You talk about character. You had lads like Antony Evans and Harry Anderson not at their best, but that shows the character of the group. They can influence a game in a single moment, you’ve got players who can produce at any moment, no matter what they’ve done previously in the game.
Yeah and Josh Grant has been superb for us all season. We’ve had moments, last time out Sam Finley didn’t have his best game. You’re going to have that from time to time, you can’t expect everybody to play well every single week.
The beauty of our team is somebody else steps forward, somebody will take the bull by the horns and try to drive a performance.
Today, we weren’t at our best in terms of some of the defensive moments and we definitely have to improve that, but again you look at the character and endeavour to keep pushing, not only to get themselves back in the game but then to go on and win it.
To see those scenes at the end, it’s irrelevant what happens next week. That’s special to make that connection again with the fanbase, with our football club and our players is, for me, the real springboard I feel we can move the club forward off.
If we get to Wembley, I think we’ll do 40,000 tickets, or as many as they can get their hands on and not many teams can say that.
We’re building something special here and today, if there were a few naysayers or non-believers, has probably converted a few more to the quarters.
Lots of things have changed, but one thing, in particular, is belief. You talk about a year ago, you go 1-0 down and I’m sat there thinking you cannot get back in the game. Today, you were 2-0 down and 3-1 down and I think everybody thought it wasn’t over until the very end.
Yeah, and I think the Oxford game and I remember Sion Spence coming on and scoring a couple of goals in extra time when we were 3-1 down and it looked like we were dead and buried. We managed to win that game from a ridiculously hard position.
I said to them at half time in the dressing room ‘If anybody can do this, it’s this group’. We don’t give up, they keep going for each other, they are as fit as they can be and that’s why, so you keep pushing at the end.
The subs came on and made an impact. It’s a real group effort and as I say, the real hard yards and hard work done in pre-season and the tough decisions of getting rid of good people who didn’t have the required skillset for us as players. It’s difficult.
It’s easy getting rid of crap people who aren’t very good at their job and there were loads of them in the club and we got rid of them, but there were also some good lads and good people who just couldn’t do what this group needed.
You look at this group now. They’re a young group, really young lads, but that togetherness and teamship and team spirit they have got is special. When you get that in a football club, you’ve got to cherish it with your lives and that will go no end to doing our confidence the world of good, but also creating that belief in and around our city about what a good period this could well be for the blue and white quarters.
What a great thing to have clinched a top-seven place today because Sutton were beaten by Bradford. No matter what happens now, next Saturday is going to be a party occasion, isn’t it?
Yeah, we knew it wasn’t in our hands after Forest Green. We felt we were going to be relying on a few results. I think we need a big goal swing or results to go our way.
But all we can do is win the game. Today, it would have been nice to win a shade more comfortably than we did, but that will live long with me as a coach, the memory of that.
This team is still in its either of just creating special moments.
I know the Mem will be rocking. I spoke about The Rolling Stones being in town and I got asked by my neighbour in Bristol ‘Any chance of a ticket for the Scunny game?’ I said ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
It’s going to be tough to get a ticket at the Mem on Saturday and that’s what we want to create.
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