Cray Valley (PM) keeper Andy Walker excelled in his sides one-nil victory over Canterbury City last weekend in the first leg of the FA Trophy semi-final. 

We knew it was going to be difficult,” Walker admitted to KSN.  “From a personal point of view, I’ve had a few niggles recently before today and then within a minute, my hamstring goes – we worked hard, it was never going to be pretty; I can give you all the excuses under the sun, wind, rain and hail, we had it all!  The pitch wasn’t great – not every game we’re going to be able to dominate and we didn’t today by any stretch, but we’ve got to be happy – we’ve got a second chance to put a performance on to finish the job!

Generally we’ll find a goal from somewhere as we’ve got so much quality in so many areas that most times we will find a goal and credit to all the lads up there as they’re not all about scoring goals, they work hard for each other and they’re just as happy for someone else to score the goals other than themselves.

But on the flip side of that,” the Cray Valley stopper said – smiling – “I think its clean sheets that win games; people say goals wins games, but it the clean sheets that do!  I’ve made a couple of saves today and the lads gave me a clap as we went into the dressing room and said well done, but all the back three or back five as we had at times have helped me out so much today. 

“They knew I was struggling as every time I came out for a ball in the air, they got round me they made sure that no-one could hit me; it really is a just a team thing, like I say, I made a couple of saves that I’m very pleased with yes but its not just about me – the boys were phenomenal and helped me out after my injury!”

We went through the four seasons during the ninety minutes today – we’ve dealt with it; we’ve dealt with everything the conditions threw at us and we dealt with everything Canterbury threw at us – clean sheet; one-nil very happy!”

Nothings changed there in the slightest,” Walker insisted.  “In fact, and this sounds a silly thing to say, its probably stacked things a little more against us.  In a normal game and you’re a goal up, you see the game through, but over two legs?  They’ve now got a week to talk about what they’re going to do to put it right and that takes the lease off them a little bit as they cant just sit – they have to do something!  At the same time, we’ve got a week to think about what we’re going to do – do we attack them and try and finish them off or do we do we rest on what we’ve got!  Its going to be very tactical – one nil is nothing.”

Images courtesy of Dave Cumberbatch