Hinckley AFC interim manager Dean Thomas spoke of his excitement at returning to the dugout after yesterday’s win at Chelmsley Town.
Nearly five years to the day after resigning as manager of Hinckley United, Thomas was back in charge with his first game as interim boss in a 5-0 win at Pack Meadow.
And Thomas said he was delighted to be back involved. He said: “I was quite excited before the game.
“It’s nice to come back to my home town club and I’ve got a lot of history with the club. I do miss the game sometimes but I’ve made a lot of decisions outside football.”
Thomas said he was pleased with the number of players from Carl Abbott’s squad who played yesterday, but admits he doesn’t know what the future holds for some despite being hopeful that most will remain with the club.
“The consensus is that the majority will stay. You never quite know, and things can change from one day to the next. We’re getting a list together and we’re hopeful that the majority will play on Tuesday.
“I expect that there may be a few changes but we’ll get to Tuesday and see what happens. Hopefully they’ll stick around.”
He said he was pleased with the way his side played, and was full of praise with the way they responded after a difficult week.
“It’s been a good day after a turbulent week. It was nice that the lads all came and the one thing I wanted today was a good attitude – to perform well and do the job properly.
“They stuck to the gameplan and in the end it was nice that we scored five goals and kept a clean sheet.
“We scored early goals in the first half and then the third really killed them off. It was important that we scored at the start of the second half, and we did. They were never going to come back from that.
“They kept on battling so fair play to them, but it was important we saw the game out and kept a clean sheet. Sometimes you can get sloppy but today we were good. The attitude of the players was great and we can now look forward to Tuesday.”
Tuesday’s Polymac Packaging League Cup match against landlords Heather St John’s will be Thomas’ first home game back at the club, and he says it’s something he’s looking forward to.
“It’s a nice local derby, especially with the groundshare. They’ll want to turn us over so it’s important that we put as a strong a side out as we can. We need to show the same attitude and application that we did today.”
