Challinor’s joy as Pools bounce back with victory
Dave Challinor felt Hartlepool United were ‘deserving’ of their 3-1 win at Aldershot Town on Saturday afternoon.
After a goalless first half, Luke Armstrong and Rhys Oates put Pools 2-0 up going into the closing stages before Mo Bettamer halved the deficit from the penalty spot.
Any late scares of dropping points were short lived as Hartlepool won a penalty of their own which Nicky Featherstone calmly dispatched to make it 3-1.
The result saw Pools move back into the top three for the time being as they bounced back from consecutive defeats in convincing fashion.
“I thought the performance was very good and deserving of the three points,” Challinor said.
“We should have been in front by half time and the only negative is the goal we conceded.
"We became over confident at 2-0 and stopped doing what was getting us lots of joy. We gave them a goal, when you get into important games, what you don't want to do is go from cruising to squeaky bum time.”
Explaining how his side were able to secure victory, the Pools boss continued: “We spoke at half-time about some things tactically because we were having a lot of joy down one side but not as much down the other.
“The second half wasn't a great deal different but we got our rewards by isolating their centre-backs against our centre-forwards.
"On another day we should convert the situations we found ourselves in into more goals. It's about winning and we did that relatively comfortably.”