The Latics overcame a potential ‘banana skin’ FA Cup tie to win 2-1 at non-league Hampton & Richmond Borough on Monday night. Losing 1-0 from a dubious 15th minute penalty, they fought back to clinch victory at the death with goals from Rob Hunt and Callum Lang. Manager Frankie Bunn was delighted with the character shown from his team.
Bunn said, “There was character shown tonight, you can see the togetherness of the squad with the celebration of Callum's goal, we're all together and we'll stick together through thick and thin. It’s something we'll need to do, there's a good spirit amongst the boys and they want to do well, like all the staff do, we want to do well for this football club. It was a difficult game, we thought it was going to be difficult and we all knew why the cameras were there and they nearly got what they wanted, but the lads dug deep and got their reward in the end.” I was relieved in the end, but I think it's what we deserved, we weren't going to win no matter what happened today, and we may have won the game, but we're not winners. It was a tough tie for us, there's a lot of League Clubs that went out of the competition over the weekend and we were fortunate in the end to not be one of them.”
“We've had some great opportunities, missing from four or five yards out and again you're thinking it's going to be one of those nights. It's been one of our failings over the last month or so, we've got to start putting our chances away and making life easier for ourselves. I can't keep going on about officials, I think he just guessed and they're going to have to start getting these decisions right because they cost people their livelihoods. I know it's a tough job and I won't shy away from that, but they have to make sure they get key decisions right and not guess, so I was disappointed with the [penalty] decision, but the boys have overcome a little bit of adversity again and have come through the other side. It obviously looked a little bit serious when he [Jose Baxter] got stretchered off, I've seen him in the changing room and he was on crutches in a boot, so we'll have to assess the damage with a scan and we'll find out more after that.”