Anthony O’Conner picked up the Man of the Match award for his standout performance against Nottingham Forest U21’s, clinching the winner in a narrow 2-1 victory at The EnviroVent Stadium to give Town a winning start to their EFL Trophy campaign.
Speaking after the game on the overall team performance the defender said: “We passed the ball around well, got into good areas, defended well when we needed to and had a good shape.”
It was a mature and experienced showing from O’Connor who was delighted to get his name on the scoresheet in the 82nd minute: “I passed it to Kayne (Ramsay) and managed to carry on my run. Kayne did what he does well, jinked into the box, I found myself in some space, kept a calm head, managed to get a good connection on it and it’s flew into the top corner.
Getting off to winning ways in the EFL Trophy was particularly important for O’Connor who went on to say: “It was nice to get on the scoresheet, but more importantly nice get a win for the confidence.”
Town will be looking to bring this confidence into their weekend fixture where they will face an in-form Gillingham side who currently sit third in the Sky Bet League Two; a tough test for Simon Weaver and his team.
“Hopefully we see more of the same. We know the league campaign is different to what tonight was, Gillingham have a lot of experience in their side, we’re away from home, the crowd will be against us, so it’ll be a different type of game.”
“Hopefully we implement what we’re good at which is getting the ball down and passing it around, in League Two you’ve got to be strong and physical, but when we do get it down, we have good players in forward areas so we’re going to have to do both sides of the game well.”