Crawley 3-0 Lincoln City: Will Swan gives his thoughts after scoring his second club goal
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00:00Well, thank you for joining us. Congratulations on your goal. Firstly, let's talk about the game. What did you make of the Reds' performance?
00:06Yeah, I think, I wouldn't say it was one of our best performances as of late, but I think despite that we, to a man, battled and put a shift in and was hard to beat and I think got a hard-earned and well-deserved three points.
00:26Yeah, I suppose when you look at, as you say, some of our recent performances, some of them have probably deserved three points more than the ones that we had tonight, but I suppose that's football, isn't it?
00:35And you've got to sort of take the positives from the other games and, you know, build them into performances like that.
00:40So what's the feeling in changing them up? Is it one of sort of relief? Is it one of just sort of like relaxed and, you know, just using this as, you know, positive momentum?
00:48Yeah, I'd definitely say relief. Like you say, some of the performances we put in probably deserved three points. But, you know, finally getting them tonight, you know, it's been a frustrating few weeks. So, yeah, relief more than anything else.
01:04Yeah, I suppose when you're battling in such a tough league like this, this is one of the hardest league ones that, you know, we've seen in a long, long time. Sometimes you have to adapt with the way you win games, I guess, and I suppose the phrase win ugly sometimes is true.
01:17And I suppose we showed that tonight because Lincoln were a good side, weren't they? You know, they put us under some real pressure at times and, you know, they're very strong and physical.
01:25So how pleasing is it as a group to know that you can channel that and, you know, sort of, you know, get up there and, you know, put people in a different manner than we used to?
01:33Yeah, definitely. It's good to show that we can, you know, do both sides of it. Like the past few weeks, you know, we've played lots of good football, but sort of not done the best job at the other side of it, you know, being physical and hard to beat. But I think tonight we showed that we can do that as well.
01:50Yeah, for yourself, obviously, your second goal for the club, you know, obviously great to get that first one against Shrewsbury, but the result didn't go our way. The talk was through it. I mean, it was a great ball from Jesse, wasn't it, to slide you through it. And it looked like the defender had almost pushed you, you know, quite far wide, but you sort of found that gap, didn't you, in the inside. Was that always the plan to sort of go near post, was it? Or did you just sort of hit it as hard as you could?
02:10No, yeah, there was no planning that, just head down and hit it. Yeah, like you say, a good ball from Jess and just, yeah, try to put something on target.
02:19Yeah, it's going to give you, as yourself, a lot of confidence, isn't it, obviously scoring your second goal for the club and, you know, keeping on. But was that a sense of relief for yourself as well, you know, when the goal went in? Because obviously you've been putting in some good performances, but, you know, I suppose you, as a striker, you always want to score every game. So was it a sense of relief for yourself as well?
02:39Yeah, obviously, as a striker, all you want to do is score and when you're not scoring, it's frustrating. But, you know, it's no good scoring but losing. So to be able to score and get three points is the main thing.
02:53Yeah, and this win, I suppose, is going to do great things for the group as a whole, isn't it? It's going to give you such great confidence. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to go out there and start winning every week just because we got the first win, but it's going to give the lads some good momentum. It's a good encouragement, isn't it?
03:09Yeah, like you say, it's hard not to sort of get too low when you're on the run of bad form, like we was. But, you know, we stuck to it and trusted everything that the gaffer was telling us to do and, you know, it came through tonight.
03:24Yeah, the fans were excellent. It's always a good atmosphere on Tuesday night, anywhere you go. But I suppose that win is as much as a relief for them as it is for you guys as well. So it was nice to sort of feel a collective buzz and obviously you got a great reception as well when you came off.
03:37Yeah, like I said, sorry, it's been a frustrating few weeks for us and no doubt even more frustrating for the fans. But, you know, it means everything that despite all that, they're still there until the last minute of every game, clapping us even when we lose. So, yeah, it felt really good to give them a performance that we can be proud of.
04:01Yeah, obviously you just mentioned the goal. Obviously when you put it through, was the thinking to kind of go near post straight away or was it a kind of last minute decision when you saw the position of the keeper or what was the thinking as you went through?
04:12I'm not sure to be honest. The defender nicked it a little bit, had a quick look up and yeah, there wasn't an awful lot of planning went into it. Just sort of head down and hit it as hard as I could.
04:26Yeah, I mean, what's it been like working under Rob Elliott? Obviously, again, that first win today must have just lifted so much pressure on the players. But what has he been like since he's come in and the kind of methods he's installed and the way he's got the team playing?
04:39Yeah, I think he's been amazing since he's come in. He's got slightly different ideas to what we were doing with Scott, but myself and all the lads believe in everything he's telling us to do and it's been showing the past few weeks. We've just not been getting the results to go with it. But even though we didn't play how we'd like to play tonight, sometimes you have to do the other side to get three points.
05:06Yeah, I mean, you're coming up against a team in Lincoln that have not lost away from home all season. So that must be a real confidence boost as well that you managed to put in such a commanding performance, really.
05:15Yeah, definitely. I think we knew it was going to be a tough game. We knew they were going to come and make it hard for us and put balls in our box. But I think to a man, we all battled well and made it really difficult for them to score.
05:29Great. Thank you very much.
05:32Just a couple of questions. So you've played a few games now abroad for the stadium. How does it fit compared to other stadiums that you may have played at? Are you enjoying it so far?
05:42Yeah, really enjoying it. Obviously, it's not the biggest, but it's always full and the fans make it really lively. You can always hear them from start to finish. So yeah, definitely enjoying playing here.
05:59You had an excellent defensive contribution in the first half. Was that a message from the manager or was that just something that you're doing out of your own determination and resilience?
06:10No, it's just something that we've all discussed as a team. We need to be better at being harder to score against. It wasn't just me. The whole XI put in a good shift to make sure they couldn't score tonight.
06:28Brilliant. Thank you.