Coventry Sphinx manager Luke Hopkins said that he got the reaction he was looking for in Sphinx’s 2-0 Midland Alliance win over Shepshed Dynamo on Monday night.
Hopkins said: “ Last night was the reaction I was looking for, I named an unchanged team apart from one which I was forced into due to injury, with Rickie cutting replacing Jerome Murdock, who it appears, we may have lost for a number of months with a knee problem, waiting on medical advice for a more precise timescale. The trust went into the lads to put right what was very badly wrong on Saturday.
”I could have made wholesale changes but I think that would have done more harm than good. When the lads perform, they get the credit they are due and we needed a big performance. We had a big crowd again and the lads are getting used to playing in front of them now, it is brilliant the atmosphere it creates.
”We started strong and were playing to the plan we had. The first goal was a brilliant free kick from Aden Moore, making his home debut and a nice way to introduce himself to the club, a free kick from 30 plus yards, pace and power across the keeper, un- saveable I’d say. Both Aden and Rickie Cutting the front pair were brilliant.
”The second goal was a long kick from the keeper, which their centre half let bounce and we pounce and punished, Kyle Baxter followed the ball and was never going to pull out of competing with the keeper if the ball was there to be won and he did, looping the ball into the goal.
“We had other chances falling to Rickie Cutting and had it not been his first game in 8 weeks, he would have put them away and as the game opened up with them pushing forward, another couple of chances fell to Gio Dainty and Kiam Galdins.
”But, it was a good result all round, clean sheet for the defence and Carl O’Neill was brilliant. It was really what we needed to stop the run of lost games.
“We go to heath Hayes on Saturday, always a tough place to go as you never know what team they are going to put out and will face you and with no midweek game next week we have one eye on the FA Vase game the following week with regards to looking at bits as we have suspensions as well as injuries.