City manager reacts to an entertaining stalemate
Following a captivating encounter against Fleetwood Town, Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale was satisfied with a hard-earned point against strong opposition.
It was the Grecians’ first ever visit to Highbury Stadium – and on reflection, a draw was a fair result on the run of play. Somehow neither team managed to find the net, but both sides gained a valuable point in the season’s end draws near.
“You have to be pleased when it’s been a very good, open game and you have to defend very strongly,” said Tis. “Both teams would have liked the three points, but we come away knowing we had to work hard to keep the clean sheet – so when we look at it, it’s another point towards where we’re trying to get to. The group had to work very hard – and the team kept their discipline very well in testing conditions.”
The draw maintained the seven-point buffer between Exeter and Fleetwood, and the hosts will have been ruing an opportunity missed to reel in City, owing to another spectacular rear-guard performance. Many of the other teams around the promotion positions slipped up, meaning that a point apiece represented a good result in the context of the weekend and the campaign as a whole.
“It’s not just us that it suits – it probably suits other clubs as well,” continued Tis. “I’m sure there are other clubs looking at our result and thinking that it’s not a bad one. So we both got a point, which could have been worse – but there’s a long way to go. We have to hold our nerve and accumulate points.
“Every week you’ll get winners and losers – Cheltenham have lost, Rotherham have lost, Port Vale have lost. But then you’ve got winners in Southend who are coming back into it, and Burton again won at Gillingham. It’s going to keep going – we just have to accept that we have to pick up points and win more than we lose.”
City return to St James Park in time for the Tuesday evening fixture against npower League 2 leaders Gillingham.