AFC Fylde boss Dave Challinor spoke to Media Officer Ben Yaffe following Saturday’s opening day defeat to Solihull Moors.
Unfortunately we’ve been beaten 3-0 today. What do you think went wrong for Fylde?
We’ve been undone by our own discipline. The game is over after 23 minutes really due to a bit of stupidity. There’s no excuse for it really. Ben is saving it and Richie’s decided to do what he did. Our set pieces were of poor quality defensive wise and we’ve been done by a long ball. In essence we’ve ended up with ten men and a penalty against us and then we’ve been undone by exactly what we thought we might be undone by. You try and be positive and keep going but when it becomes 2:0 after 20 minutes then you’ve just got to try to get to half time without conceding again. We changed our shape to try and get higher up the pitch. I thought the back three were outstanding and they ended up defending three v three for large periods. We had our chances but we didn’t get that bit of luck we needed. At 2:0 we needed the next goal in the game to get back in it but it wasn’t to be. The goal at the end is irrelevant really but I’m delighted with the effort and application we’ve showed in the second half. Unfortunately we’ve been let down by one individual.
You must be pleased with the second half performance as Fylde seemed to have more of the ball and could have scored on a number of occasions?
I’m pleased with the application and pleased with the work rate but ultimately, indiscipline has cost us and we’ve had a good chat, hopefully we will all move on and learn from what happened to day. I’ve been drilling into them for the past six weeks how important discipline is and how we need to stick together today it’s ultimately cost us. We didn’t do great with defending set-pieces last season and we have started this season in the same way. The lads worked their socks off in the second half on a big pitch on a really hot day against ten men which is great for fitness I suppose. We’ll recover and try to put it right for Tuesday. We ended up doing really well last season despite losing two of our first three games so it’s obviously not the end of the world. Some of the lads can look at themselves and say they couldn’t have done any more given the circumstances, but we move on to Tuesday which we’re all looking forward to.
Sam Finley made his AFC Fylde debut. What did you make of his performance?
He’ll do really well for us. He got in some good positions and passed it around well but he didn’t get many breaks to be honest and the pitch was a bit sticky. When we managed to get between the defence and midfield, the ball got a bit stuck and the final pass wasn’t really there. He’s got quality. He’ll create, and score goals and ultimately if we had 11 men on the pitch for the whole game, then we’d have seen a lot more from him and a lot more from everyone really because we had to chase the game. He’s worked his socks off and we’re all very frustrated today but he’s going to be a really positive signing for the club.
Will you be thinking about making some changes for Tuesday night’s game against Hednesford, given the opening day result?
The result isn’t that important today if I’m honest after what happened. Performances are though and some of the lads did really well this afternoon after we changed our shape. Any game-plan we had went out the window when Richie was sent off which is disappointing if I’m honest. We’ll have a look in the next couple of days about the team for the Hednesford game, whether there will be changes in personnel or tactics or anything else. Matty Hughes is unlikely to be available still. We’ll probably do some work with him during the week. He’s had his foot x-rayed again and it’s just bruising on the bone instead of a break or anything serious. He’s running around alright but he’s struggling to hit the ball with any kind of power at the moment so we’ll leave him until the weekend at the earliest.