As with any sport a win puts a spring in the step, and manager Keith Millen admitted that was an important ingredient for a dressing room that had previously worked hard without any reward.
“It is important, you can’t deny it, because everyone needed it,” he said. “Anything that gives you belief in what you’re doing is important, isn’t it.
“If you’re doing a lot of things right and you’re not getting the reward, eventually that will start wearing on you. I’m conscious of that. For all the good stuff we’ve been doing for a while now you need those rewards.
“When you win a game it just gives that little bit more belief. But there is a lot of belief in the dressing room, I’ve been saying it for a while now. The fact we scored two goals will obviously make it better for them.”
“It’s good for the group and for the fans to travel down in numbers, it’s great for them,” he continued. “They were right behind us from the start and to go over to them to clap at the end was great.
“They’re the moments I really want more of. We’ve got to play our part on the pitch, but they certainly did their bit for us.
“To keep it going we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. We didn’t change our tactics or shape, we’ve got an identity to what we’re doing, so we’ve just got to keep doing that. I’ve said that from day one.
“But even with that belief, football is football. You still have to work to the end. Even with a two-goal advantage I didn’t feel comfortable, certainly until he blew the whistle, but I didn’t see them really opening us up.
“We defended really well. We were really disciplined, we minimised the mistakes, we were in the right areas at the right time and felt it needed to be something a little bit special for them to score. They had a couple of half chances, headers near the end, but generally I felt pretty confident.
“They had their moments, to be fair to them, but Mark [Howard] didn’t have loads of saves to make. They got into some good areas, aerially they were a threat, and that’s certainly the biggest team I’ve put out in terms of physicality to try to counter that.
“I’m not saying that’s us, but we have to be able to do both sides of the game. I still want us to be better on the ball, but this game was about competing, and we did that.”