Stevenage manager Graham Westley said his team got what they deserved with a win over Hartlepool after a good display in the opening game of the Sky Bet League 2 season.
He told us, “You could feel the buzz around the stadium and the sense that the club is back alive again when the ball hit the net from Whelps.
“It had been a frustrating afternoon, we had a lot of chances and the goalkeeper pulled some unbelievable saves off. After last season you could have that sense of negativity about it, that it’s not going be our day again, because we had too many of them. But the boys were tremendous, their workrate, their desire, their sense of ambition that they played with. They got the points that they deserved.”
Midfielder Charlie Lee, voted by Boro fans as Man of the Match on the Boro Wall, was equally as positive saying “We are going to score goals and we are going to keep clean sheets, so we’ve just got to keep doing the right things. We look strong, the boys have worked hard in pre-season and I think you can see that we were a step-up from them all over the pitch.
“The last five minutes you always get a bit nervy when you’re only 1-0 up, so hopefully we can get a few more goals earlier.”
Chris Whelpdale scored the only goal of the game on his competitive debut for Stevenage and he told us, “It’s always good to get three points on the first game of the season. It puts us in good stead for the season and we backed it up with a good performance.“
Describing his goal he said, “Adam got the ball out wide. There was a lot of space inside, I ran into that and he put me through. No one came to shut me down so I unleashed one!”
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