Sandy praises players' 'character' as Diamonds battle back to beat Bourne Town
Elliot Sandy praised the character of his team after AFC Rushden & Diamonds fought back from a half-time deficit to sink struggling Bourne Town 1-0 and give their play-off hopes a boost.
Diamonds were off the pace in the first half and went in at the break trailing 1-0, but they turned on the style to score three second-half goals and secure three points.
Rushden came out flying after the interval and equalised within 60 seconds through Aidan Webster, and then three minutes later they were ahead thanks to Tarik Dallas.
Keeper Dan Jezeph made a crucial stop in the closing minutes, before Jack Daldy was shown a red card in stoppage time, but there was still time for a third for Diamonds as Bruno Andrade, tapped home after an Ollie Evans shot was fumbled by the Bourne keeper.
The win was a first in four games for Sandy's side, who are 12th in the Pitching-In Northern Premier League Midlands Division, and six points adrift of the top five ahead of Tuesday night's scheduled trip to 17th-placed Coventry Sphinx.
And Sandy was very happy with his players - for their second-half performance at least.
"The lads knew themselves after the first half that our standards are a lot higher than that," Sandy told @AFCRD. "I thought we started okay in the first 10 minutes, but we were wasteful and sloppy on the ball, so at half-time I let them know how I felt about things.
"We are better than we were showing and I said we needed a reaction, and told them that if they were not going to go and do it in the second half, we have four substitutes who will.
"We came out firing, it was a great start to the second half, and everything we didn't do in that first half, we did in the second.
"We were biting into challenges, we were winning first balls, we pinned them in and scored two great goals to start with.
"We then defended really well as well, kept them at arm's length, and to then get the third one to seal it, especially as we were down to 10 men at that point, was superb.
"It was great character from our lads to come back and win a game on a really heavy pitch, where you had to really dig in and scrap for things, and then the quality came through.
"That was a really important win and now we go on to a really difficult one on Tuesday against a team that had a really good away win on Saturday as well."
Sphinx were 3-0 winners at St Neots Town, with former Diamonds striker Raymond Poku netting twice on his debut for the Coventry side.
It was a second victory in three games for Sphinx, who had gone nine games prior to that without winning.