Courtney Hunter-Belford praised the “ruthless” nature of his Hinckley AFC side as they hit a 10-1 win at Kirkby Road.
Brady Middleton grabbed a hat-trick but there were six different goalscorers among the relentless performance against AFC Bridgnorth.
And he said that, while it was harsh on a Bridgnorth side who have struggled with injuries throughout this season, he was delighted with how Hinckley kept their foot on the gas.
He said: “We’ve got to be what we’ve got to be. We were ruthless, especially in the second half. It could be easy to take your foot off the gas but we didn’t and the substitutes kept the tempo where we wanted it to be.
“We said at half-time, as cliche as it is, make it 0-0 and get into the routine of working hard off the ball.
“We’re clicking and we’re gelling, and it helped keeping that group together from last season. We’re pleased with the manner of the performance, the work ethic and it’s another game ticked off.”
He was also pleased with the manner of the goals scored, especially early on. He and Joe Conneely have stressed their desire to get the ball down and pass it well on the artificial surface, and Hunter-Belford said the Bridgnorth win was a prime example of that.
“We scored some amazing goals, some of the passages of play were fantastic. We’ve got to be expansive and get on the ball and create overloads and be patient.
“We’ve got some really good footballers. We have to be expansive at home on a big pitch, we’re getting used to how big it is and the space it exploits. When you have that many good footballers and everybody’s comfortable with the ball, everybody wants the ball.
“We said to take the shackles off and not be afraid to make honest mistakes. As long as it’s not repetitive, we want to instil confidence in the players and make them want to do that. When it comes off, like tonight, it’s great.”
In total, there have now been 19 different goalscorers hitting the net for Hinckley this season contributing 39 goals in total.
Hunter-Belford called it an “incredible” statistic and says the management team encourage everyone to be expressive and get into goalscoring situations.
“That season we were in the UCL, there was probably only one outfield player who didn’t score. We don’t want to pigeonhole anybody into a role, we say to lads to get on the ball and play and do what’s on.
“We’ll make mistakes but we’ll learn from them. We want to get bodies forward once we’ve got the ball, it’s just tidying up a bit and not having too many forward at one time.
“Brady and Tom give us a different dimension up there, and helped us get different people into attacking situations.
“We won’t get ahead of our station, it’s nice to be top of the pile but let’s see where we are come the end of April.”
