Eckert praises “mature” performance
Following a game of two halves at the Riverside Stadium, Tonda Eckert praised his side’s performance to come away with a 0-0 draw in the play-off semi-final first leg.
Penned into their own half in the opening 45 minutes, Saints stood firm to head into the break goalless, growing into the tie after the restart.
Taylor Harwood-Bellis crashed a header off the crossbar inside the final 10 minutes before Sam Edozie saw a shot fly agonisingly wide in the closing stages, as Eckert’s side finished the strong of the two teams.
With it all still to play for in Tuesday night’s second leg, Saints’ Head Coach reflected on his side’s show of togetherness.
“Very mature performance over 90 minutes. I think you have to give credit to a good side that we come up against ,and we knew this beforehand that we need to suffer in some moments of the game. I think the boys have done that in an outstanding manner.
“I think if you come up in those games you will always have some moments where teams push you a little bit further down and I think that we've shown this now that we can be very resilient even if we don't touch the ball. I think especially in the second half, the game opened up and we have two big chances to win it then in the end.
“I think we've played an excellent first half to come here at this stage of the season and be so resilient and so united as a team. I just think it speaks for the character and the state of where we are as a group at the very moment. That's what I told them. Excellent first half, the game was going to open up and then as it was, we took more and more charge in control of the game and we have two big ones towards the end.
“But we're at half-time now. We take all of the positives from today and try to bring them into Tuesday and that's going to be the job.”
