Glenn Morris believes the Gillingham players can be proud of their fight and resolve having finished Saturday's game at Grimsby with just nine players.
The Gills goalkeeper spoke about how they dealt with the challenges of changing game plans throughout the fixture, but credited the team for keeping the game close despite the tiring impact of playing with two fewer men.
Morris also credited the 489 travelling supporters, who continued to back the team throughout, thanking them for their role in pushing the players on in such difficult circumstances.
On the game…
Obviously, a lot has gone on in the game. You have to deal with certain situations, and you go down to ten men at 0-0, and I thought that to a man, the boys worked so well and hard. We couldn’t have put any more effort into the game.
The game plan sort of worked; obviously, we had to change our game plan, but the game plan worked when we were down to ten men. To hang in there, and we knew that we would come up with something. It’s made more difficult by going down to nine men, and you have to change your game plan again to last in the game and not to drift. Not to get beat by three, four or five.
We really dug in well. You can tell by the way we were applauded off, and in the last ten minutes, they were hanging on, for how well we have done. We feel deflated, but feel really proud of ourselves for the way that we have worked.
The resolve of the team…
We’ve got to be proud of how we responded to the adversity on the pitch. We really did. It shows what we’re about as a team. We got on with it and we rolled our sleeves up. We dug in, and we can feel disappointed that we didn’t manage to scrape a goal at the end, but we gave ourselves a chance. That’s all you can do with nine men.
It helps us with going into next week’s game, and that’s important.
Playing in goal with ten/nine men…
It’s your job. You’re a goalkeeper. You’re the last line of defence. You know that you’re going to be tested when you go down to ten men, nine men even. You just want to try and keep us in the game. You stay in the game yourself and make sure that everyone is still doing the right things. It’s hard, because people are getting tired and you still have to keep trying to work and squeeze up the play. It’s not easy. It’s not easy trying to keep clean sheets in this league with eleven men, so when you’re down to ten or nine, it’s really hard.
The boys were brilliant ahead of me. I’m just gutted that we couldn’t nick a goal at the end.
The travelling support…
We’ve had great numbers travel. It was fantastic. They always do. It’s brilliant, and it did drive us on. You could hear the support. They were brilliant at the end, but it’s a shame we couldn’t have been celebrating a point. It was really good.
