Nick Hutchings (Photo Credit: Andy Orman)
Originally published 12/04/16 on South Coast Journalism
Poole Town shotstopper Nick Hutchings labelled his teammates ‘brilliant’ as they moved one step closer to the league title with a point against Hitchin.
Hero Hutchings’ penalty save was enough for a draw up in Hitchin, which saw three red cards in the second half.
However, the ‘keeper was keen to mention his off-putting antics before his opponent, Lewis Rolfe, stepped up to take the spotkick.
“There was a bit of mind games with the penalty taker before he took it – could he keep his bottle?
“I sort of could see that he was bricking himself, so it was nice to get there and save it really. He scuffed it, but it was a decent save.”
With there being controversy surrounding the decision to award the penalty, many ‘keepers would have felt an injustice – but Hutchings shook those feelings off to produce a fine save.
“Penalties are given, aren’t they? Sometimes you don’t agree with it, today we felt we were a little bit hard done by.”
Hutchings has become a stalwart for Poole in between the sticks, ever since arriving in January 2012. And over the years, he has kept 107 cleansheets, including the one he earnt at the weekend.
“Four [cleansheets] in a row is decent. The lads have been brilliant, everyone has said a lot of things about last season, could we see it off this year.
“They’ve been brilliant, answered a lot of questions, [we’ve] just got four massive games to come, and we know what we need to do to get those results, and we need to win the league now.”
With so many people comparing the end of last year’s campaign to the current one, it appears Poole’s squad are extremely keen to amend their mistakes of last season.
Hutchings went on to praise the fighting spirit shown in recent weeks, as Poole look to finally win promotion out of the Southern Premier League.
“The nine lads that were on the pitch at the end just showed tremendous spirit, which really epitomises how we’ve been for most of the season, we’re such a tight-knit group of lads, and we want to win this league, so bad.”
All Poole Aren't We 