Gil Hunter started on the right-hand side of Guernsey FC’s back three against Lingfield before shifting to the central defensive role 10 minutes into the second half when Jacques Cauvin replaced Jamie Dodd, at which stage the hosts were still trailing 2-1.
The Green Lions turned things around to win 4-2 and young Hunter came in for special praise from manager Tony Vance afterwards for his overall performance and particularly the way he dealt with opposing striker Jeff Duah-Kessie.
‘If you actually look back, I’m really amazed how Gil didn’t get man of the match – I thought he was incredible,’ Vance said.
‘He probably doesn’t realise how well he played, he just gets about his job. He just does it.
‘When we took Doddie off, we were like, “OK, we need to have some experience in that last central position”. And then it’s like, “no, let’s trust Gil against their big number nine”, and he was great.’
Another positive Vance pointed to was the source of the four goals his side scored, with Frazer Maginnis giving them the early lead before defenders Cauvin and Ben Solway turned things around in the second half followed by the added bonus of an own goal in injury time that sealed the victory.
‘Doddie said on the side actually, you look at the four scorers – Maginnis, Cauvin, Solway and an own goal – they’re four that you probably wouldn’t expect to score goals, with the players we’ve got and the firepower we’ve got, so yeah, we’ve found a way to win,’ said the manager.
However, Vance added that GFC had ‘helped massively’ with the two Lingfield goals in the first half, both scored by Deven Reid-Solanki, which left him frustrated.
‘Both goals were really poor from us. The press was so second rate and it was reactive,’ he said.
‘That was kind of the video clips that we were showing beforehand and what we work on, and they got out and that’s our weakness. Then we’re in trouble.
‘The second one, I thought we should have stopped him getting forward with maybe some dangerous defending in terms of putting your body on the line and I don’t think we did enough of it.
‘What they’ve got is this big guy up front and then they’ve got the two wide boys who are very, very quick.
'Both goals sort of prove that, because what they’re doing is they’re going to wait and sit in a sort of a 5-4-1 formation ready to counter quickly.
'If you don’t hunt the ball down when it’s in transition, you’re open and you’re susceptible. That’s how we’re playing, and they got the goals they wanted.
‘Their game plan would have been, “right, let’s see this out [in the] second half, let’s run the clock down, let’s just really frustrate them”.
'We had to completely flip that around, give as much energy as we could, really go at them and keep punching and jabbing, and to be fair, we did that.’
It was important that they did, too, as all four sides immediately below them in the Southern Combination Premier Division also won on Saturday.
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