Hinckley AFC assistant manager Paul Tomlinson said his side played some “sublime” football in yesterday’s 4-0 win at Lichfield City.
Another brace from Ryan Seal took his tally for the season to 28 as he started and finished the scoring, while Pauk Sullivan and an own goal also contributed to the scoresheet.
The comfortable win at fellow high-flyers meant Hinckley leapfrogged their hosts to move up to fourth in the table, and Tomlinson was delighted with the way his side asserted themselves on the game. He said: “You come to a game like this (at Lichfield) and you know you’re going to be in a battle. The lads have first of all won the battle that needed to be won.
“The pitches are starting to turn a little bit now but I think some of the football we played on a sticky pitch has been sublime.
“I don’t think they (Lichfield) could cope with the movement of our players today and the quality of our football has come through again. That’s four or five games on the trot now that we’ve performed like that.
“And when you play well and take your chances, you can make the game look easy. It wasn’t easy, not by a long chalk, but we made it look easy today and I’m so pleased for everyone’s that put a big shift in.”
On what was far from a far from easy pitch to play on, Hinckley still found a way to play their game and Tomlinson feels his side have learnt their lessons from last season.
“I thought we threw the league away last year with how we played when the pitches started to turn. We were still trying to play a similar style of football as on carpets and you can’t do that.
“Today I think we’ve been a bit more simplistic with our game. We’re still playing football but we’re doing it in the right areas and we’ve not really given sloppy possession away in areas that are going to hurt us.
“It’s really pleasing that we’ve adapted slightly and it was a great performance all round.”
The result also saw Hinckley keep a clean sheet – only their third in the league this season. But those three have come in their last four games and Tomlinson now wants the back four to settle.
“As I said last week, it’s the bane of my life (that only three league clean sheets have been kept this season) and even last week, when you look at the game, it was a corker of a strike that beat us so I thought we defended quite well last week.
“But today I thought we were magnificent. We had Jack (Farmer) coming in alongside Jamal (Clarke) today, and he’s a quality centre half. I think the supporters have seen what he can bring to the squad today with Jamal. He can play, he can tackle, he can head, he’s strong and quick. He’s got everything we want from a defender.
“If we can get this back for now together and settled, and we can stop giving silly goals away which today we haven’t, we can go a long, long way in this league with performances like that.”
