Craig Tanner downplayed his sixth goal of the season and pinpoint free-kick as merely “alright” – but Fleet fans knew it was the breakthrough their side needed and the springboard for the three points against Eastbourne Borough on Saturday.
Tanner, who aside from his sixth goal also boasts the most assists in the Fleet side with 11 this season, also revealed he’d taken on board some advice from skipper Chris Solly as to where to send the strike that ended up in the back of the net.
“Yeah, it was alright,” Tanner said of his free-kick. “I wasn’t sure what side to go so I pulled Solly over and thought which side should I put it, should I reverse it, will I go up and over the wall – and he said to reverse it so I gave it my best shot and luckily it clipped the bar and went in.
“I just asked him, which side do you reckon so that’s what I tried to do. Luckily enough this time it went in, next time I might not be so lucky. Doing it in training and doing it in a game are two separate things. Dom Poleon’s been giving me a bit of stick because I think I’ve had three free kicks and not scored so when I scored that one I had a little word with him at half-time.”
Tanner also praised the impact of substitute Jack Paxman whose trickery and vision almost opened the way for Poleon to score before a repeat showing did the trick eight minutes from the end.
“I thought Pax was superb when he came on,” said Tanner. “It’s a great ball and they had quite a high line – with Dom’s pace, he was a real handful for them today and that’s what Dom wants, balls in behind. Then he’s finished it really well, showed some great composure and they didn’t really look like scoring once we went 2-0. That’s something we needed to work on, we’ve been leaking goals far too often. We’ve worked harder in training and we’ve got our reward, a clean sheet, which is more important than maybe the second goal for us.”
Echoing his manager’s thoughts, Tanner felt that a clean sheet was the platform to build upon to turn round recent adverse results.
“It hasn’t been good enough, it’s as simple as that and there’s no beating around the bush,” said the former Aldershot player. “Two wins in seven for the calibre of players we have is nowhere near good enough. The fans deserve a lot more so we all spoke, we’ve put things right throughout the week, we’re working hard every day and I thought that was a good performance. I don’t think it was as free-flowing and attacking as it has been in the past but maybe we’ve taken a little edge off that to get the three points and now it’s on us to find the right balance.
“Every team goes through blips, ups and downs, and it’s how you handle them and come back from them. We’ve given a good performance – every man has worked their socks off, even to the last kick of the game and there’s lots of fouls but we dusted ourselves off, got the three points and we need to build on that now. It can’t be three wins in eight, we need to go again against Bath. It’s a long journey down there and hopefully a few fans will come and we’ll go from there.”
Fleet face a trip to Bath for the first time in five years at the weekend looking for successive victories to cement that place amongst the division’s front runners.
“It’ll be a tough game away from home,” said Tanner. “In this league I’ve found anyone can beat anyone on the day. If you look at results, there’s always three or four shock results which you think, oh that’s a definite three points for that team. And coming into the 13/14 games left there’s going to be these sort of results so hopefully when the results go that way you can capitalise on it. We need to go down there and more importantly keep a clean sheet because that’s a minimum point and then hope our firepower can get us over the line.”
