Notts County head coach Ian Burchnall praised his side’s powers of recovery as they put Tuesday night’s nightmare at Stockport behind them by winning 2-1 at Dagenham & Redbridge, recovering from going behind after five minutes to win through an Alex Lacey header and an own goal by Daggers’ skipper Will Wright.
Illness and injury contributed to a lacklustre performance in the 3-0 defeat at the National League leaders in midweek and Notts’ problems continued here, as they were without Cal Roberts, Ruben Rodrigues and Joel Taylor, with other players still under the weather and Harry Arter making his debut after only joining the club from Nottingham Forest on Thursday. Despite that they produced a battling performance to overcome one of their promotion rivals and move back into the play-off places.
After seeing his side move up to seventh in the table, Burchnall said: “We have been backs against the wall for the past ten days so I am so pleased for the players, they so deserve this win.
“Today was an example of real team spirit and we showed unbelievable resilience in the last 30 minutes when Dagenham threw everything at us. Overall it was a fantastic display by the lads.
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“Lacey and Richard Brindley had to come off at half-time so credit to Connell Rawlinson and also Adam Chicksen, who was brilliant. He had to go to centre back in a back four as we had totally run out of centre backs and I thought he was magnificent.
“He won almost every header against Paul McCallum, who is excellent in the air, and I thought we defended the box very bravely. That has been a weak spot for us, defending set plays, so when you lose two centre backs and still defend as well as that, I’m as pleased about the way we defended in the back end of the game as with the quality we showed in the first half.”
Burchnall was also full of praise for the 420 travelling Notts fans and thanked them for backing the team when the pressure was on.
“They were incredible from minute one,” he said. “I think they realised we had had a rough week and needed to get behind us.
“I can';t thank them enough and when we needed them at the end they gave us that little push. We now have two tough home games and that win gives us a good platform going into them.”
Burchnall wouldn’t be drawn on whether or not any of the absentees will be fit to face Boreham Wood at Meadow Lane on Tuesday, while revealing that Brindley, in his first match back after injury, will be checked after suffering a suspected broken arm. We’ll have a look at them all on Monday, but having got Lacey off at half-time it’s possible he could be fit to play,” he said.
On Arter’s debut, which lasted just over an hour, Burchnall said: “It was his first game in a long while but we knew he would be able to give us 60 minutes, and he really showed his class, with a great corner for the first goal.
“Hopefully we can freshen him up and he can play a part against Boreham Wood. It’s quite clear Harry is a fantastic footballer but he just hasn’t been playing and I think he enjoyed himself today.
“He showed the vision he has to open the game up for us, which is going to be hugely important, but it is his first game for a while and he looked tired, so once he got that yellow card we decided to get him off and freshen him up for Tuesday.”
