Although the Green Lions were given a flying start against Lingfield by an early Frazer Maginnis goal, they trailed to Deven Reid-Solanki’s brace by the break and it required a much-improved second-half performance for the play-off chasers to beat their 16th-placed visitors 4-2 at Victoria Park.
‘We had a really terrible 30 minutes in the first half, and that really made things difficult for us,’ said GFC manager Vance.
‘We started off electrically and then the batteries came out I think, to be honest, and we just stopped.
‘We have these little lulls where we think we can have time on the ball and we forget our ethos and the reasons we’re electric, the reasons we can be dynamic, and we go in this little lull, which is exactly what opposition want. It then drains everything and it puts you in a difficult situation.
‘So, yeah, I was pretty disappointed at half-time and explained to them that I just cannot understand it. We warned them before the game as well – we showed them videos in midweek of us doing it and stuff that we need to do as part of the package.
‘Anyway, that aside, the second half response was brilliant. At one stage I thought, “it’s not going to go our way”, we got a little bit fortunate with equaliser because I think that was probably a foul, but you make your own luck, don’t you? We did miss chances in the end, so it’s good to get over the line in the end after that 30 minutes. But it just shows in football, you can have a lull period like that, and it can change everything.’
In the absence of Jacob Fallaize, who picked up a dead leg in training, and the rested Ross Allen, Vance also emphasised the importance of getting other players back from injury with Jacques Cauvin scoring the second-half equaliser on his return before Ben Solway nodded GFC in front and an injury-time own goal sealed the three points.
‘Fin Patterson played really well, Frazer got his goal, and I’ve said this before, we replace in wide areas. You bring on another couple that are going to go at them.
‘Obviously Jacques, while he’s a defender, he’s a very front-foot defender and the way we play, he’s perfect.
‘They were really aggressive substitutions and helped get us over the line.’
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