Garry Hill said his feelings were “very mixed” after Fleet’s first-half lead was pulled back by a quite excellent free-kick 20 minutes from time on Tuesday night.
“I thought we started quite bright,” Hill told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster. “From 1-0 up, I was hoping that we’d push on and have that drive after a very good win on Saturday to turn round and go on and win the game. We never really reached the heights after going 1-0 up that I was hoping to. I wasn’t 100% happy at half-time after the start that we had. I think it was a great opportunity for us against a team who got a very good result on Saturday, don’t get me wrong, but with their current form overall, it was the ideal start we wanted. We never pushed on from that. I said to the boys at half-time that the last 20 minutes of the first half wasn’t up to the standard in respect of work rate and drive that we need to ask enough questions. I knew it would be a tough game second-half and being fair to them, they got the ball forward quickly, were picking a lot more second balls up.”
Despite Maidenhead coming back into the game after the restart, the Fleet boss felt his side still carved out the chances to take all three points.
“We had a few chances as well to win the game, in good positions,” he said. “Michael Cheek took his goal very well but he got himself one on one against the goalkeeper. From where I was I thought he was going to put it across the goalkeeper but he’s gone to the near post. There was a couple of headers that went across the box – on another day someone gets on the end of them.
“The game becomes a little bit stretched on a heavy pitch. It was very interesting seeing our fourth game in 10 days, you see certain things in respect of where we are. They’ve got a cheap free-kick given to them and all credit to the lad, it’s a great free-kick. I thought Nathan Ashmore looked like he was too far over to the side where the ball’s gone but it’s a great free-kick in the top corner. Then you lose Dave Winfield after Andy Drury and your three subs are on. They’ve got their tails up a little bit, towards their favourite end where their fans are. 1-0 up you like to think you’d go on and win the game but you’ve got no given right to do that.”
With another testing trip to Aldershot coming up on Saturday, Hill refuses to be downbeat, taking the positives from another unbeaten game for his side.
“We can’t be too despondent,” he said. “The last 10 minutes we’ve ended up playing with 10 men , we haven’t got beaten and if someone had said you’d take four points out of six, it’s not a bad return. I’ll take the positives, we haven’t lost, Danny Kedwell’s playing centre-half and it’s a great equalising goal. You can’t say much about that. Certain things have gone on over the last few days; we don’t mope about that. There’s a reason things get done at football clubs. It’s going to be interesting over the next few days as to what we’ve got and what we haven’t got. We’ll have a roll call in respect of bodies and numbers and we go from there.”
Listen below.
