Travel delays in getting to Peacehaven & Telscombe for their big clash with another of the main play-off contenders caused kick off to be put back by an hour and Guernsey FC then lost defensive lynchpin Jacob Fallaize in the warm-up, causing a late reshuffle to the starting XI, but manager Tony Vance stuck to his guns with his approach and Sam Murray’s injury-time goal gave them a crucial 1-0 win on the road.
‘It’s not what you want, and Jacob is has been a real mainstay. Bizarrely, in some of the interviews I did at the weekend previous, I was applauding how fit Jacob was and the condition he was in – and gave him the kiss of death,’ Vance said.
‘But he’s got this long-standing problem which unfortunately reared its head again at the weekend, it just flared up in the warm up. It was nothing more than that. It comes and goes, but he’s been managing it really, really well. Terrible timing really, because we were already shy of Jacques Cauvin.
‘So not having him and then losing Jacob meant that we had some real decisions to make... it’s like red or black, isn’t it? It’s a toss of a coin.
'Do you say “Right, let’s go to a back four, low block, let’s try and see it out given the players we got”, or do we continue with the style and ethos and have a go and we could get caught out, which has happened in other games and deservedly so.
‘But it was a real worry, but the one huge difference that we’ve got this year is the fact that we can now travel with nigh on 15, 16 players and we speak about the finishers, if you like, the people coming on, and they’re the ones that won us the game.
‘What we needed in that last 10-15 minutes was the burst of energy.
'Obviously when you travel with 12-13 and you lose Jacob, it’s not looking good. But when you lose Jacob and you’ve got four subs still remaining, that’s fantastic because you can re-energise, particularly the way we’re playing, which is very high energy.
‘So it’s good to sort of bring some people on just just when those games can be won or lost.’
Vance also paid tribute to Jamie Dodd, who stepped into Fallaize’s central defensive role, as he described his side’s narrow victory as ‘a much better result’ than the 8-0 thrashing of Roffey a week earlier.
‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but to go away to a team in fourth, doing well and they were a good side, to be fair, and with the issues we had in terms of travel and player availability, to nick a 1-0, and for once it was in our favour because we’ve had so many sucker punches over the recent years, was absolutely fantastic.
‘I thought Faz [Will Fazakerley] did really well for the goal and Sam, who’s on a [purple] patch at the moment in terms of scoring goals, finished it well. So, yeah, great goal.
‘It was a really good result and the players were magnificent, particularly second half.’
The GFC manager also revealed, though, that he was actually announced as the goalscorer in the ground.
‘The stadium announcer ran over to our dugout and said, “excuse me, who scored the winning goal?” So I just jokingly said, “Tony Vance”, and expected him to sort of laugh and say, “don’t be silly”.
‘He walked off very pleased with himself and said, “And the Guernsey goalscorer was Tony Vance”.’
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.