Peaks: Diamonds made it hard for themselves

Having suffered a defeat to Rushall Olympic in their previous Evo-Stik League South Premier Division Central and then going down 2-0 at Witton Albion in the second qualifying round of the Buildbase FA Trophy, Diamonds bounced back with Ben Diamond and Jack Bowen on target.

But Peaks’ side were made to sweat as Ezra Forde pulled one back and Hitchin hit the post in stoppage-time while Diamonds goalkeeper Ben Heath also pulled off a superb save to help preserve the points.

And while he was delighted to see his team pick up three points, Peaks feels his team could do better when it comes to “game management”.

“It was a game that, at 2-0, probably should have been more comfortable than it ended up being,” Peaks said.

“But you have to give credit to Hitchin. They played with the attitude that they wanted to keep gambling at 2-0 and they made things difficult.

“We probably need to manage games a little better. You don’t have to go and try to score three or four and rush things when you are 2-0 up.

“I think we can learn a lot from the teams we have lost to recently in Rushall and Witton and kill the game off.

“That said, I don’t want to take anything away from our boys because they do want to score goals and play exciting football and they also got some blocks in at key times, you have to do that to win games of football.

“You have to win your battles but I just felt we made it a bit more difficult for ourselves in the last 15 minutes.

“Overall though, it was important after the little setback at the weekend and the previous home game that we bounced back with three points and that’s what we did.”

Diamonds will be back in action at Hayden Road on Saturday when they take on bottom side Bedworth United.