Crewe 0 Walsall 1 - George Bennett and Nathan Judah analysis - video Dailymotion

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Crewe 0 Walsall 1 - George Bennett and Nathan Judah analysis

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00:00Hello, I'm Nathan Duda. I'm here with Walsall Report. It is George Bennett. George, I don't know where to start really.

00:07Well, let's start with the result and that is they needed to win. They got a win. It was one of their best performance,

00:12if not the best performance in the last couple of months. And they were seconds, seconds away from going into League One

00:22before Bradford scored in the 96th minute. I mean, the Walsall fans are devastated. You're devastated. I'm devastated.

00:29I'm sure Matt Sadler's gutted but needs to G them up again. Just put it into words, those last few seconds.

00:36Gutted. Absolutely gutted. And it's hard to really put it into words. I mean, it's heartbreaking to be multi-seconds, really,

00:46away from automatic promotion. It really did feel that the footballing gods had aligned for Walsall.

00:54The win when they needed it the most, yeah, they did, yeah.

00:57And unfortunately, you could just, the atmosphere was palpable. I mean, you could just hear the crew fans

01:04and, yeah, that was when we knew that Bradford had scored and it was just incredibly deflating

01:12to go from a high like that to a low like that.

01:16As you were saying, if Bradford had won 1-0 or 2-0 or they were ahead earlier on in the game, it's a little bit easier to swallow.

01:23Of course it does. But to do it in those circumstances after everything that's gone on over the last couple of months, it's just cruel.

01:30Cool. That's exactly it. I mean, that's the word that Matt Sadler used just there when we spoke to him.

01:36And, you know, especially after what was a really strong team performance.

01:40I mean, you know, we've been massively critical of the way Walsall have played over the course of the last three months.

01:45And understandably so. And, you know, they find themselves in this situation because of that.

01:49But today they did their job and they put in a really good performance, solid defensively.

01:54That moment when George Hall scored there, I mean, we've got, what, over 2,500 Walsall fans here today

01:59filling out pretty much two of the stands and they were electric throughout.

02:04Amazing.

02:04And just that moment in itself, if you could just bottle that up, it was amazing.

02:09Yeah, it really did feel like it was going to be their day.

02:12But unfortunately we're stood here and it's a lottery of the playoffs now.

02:15Yeah. In terms of performance, George, so many excellent performances all over the pitch.

02:22I mean, who stood out to you today?

02:23Two, I think. George Hall was just absolutely tremendous and he probably just edges it because of his winning goal.

02:30But I think Harry Williams today at the back, I mean, since he came back in,

02:35it appears that his runs out of the team have sort of maybe knocked him off his rhythm a tad.

02:40But today he's back to his best. He was an absolute rock.

02:43I mean, there was one in particular where I think it was Taylor Allen had come out of position

02:49and had left his man unmarked to the back post.

02:52And if Crude got to that ball first, looks that across, it's potentially 1-0.

02:58And Harry Williams got across just in the nick of time, timed his tackle perfection, great interception.

03:03And he set Walsall on the counter at all, jealous with that poetic spin, which was definitely eye-catching.

03:09So, yeah, I think Williams was brilliant.

03:11But for me, the match winner, George Hall, brilliant display, a live wire, a threat, creative, a great player to watch.

03:19You just spoke to Matt Sadler there.

03:21His job now will be turning this devastation into a positive, into the 90 minutes and not the last few seconds.

03:28And getting this team ready for two brutal games because it's going to be an absolute battle, isn't it, against Chesterfield?

03:36Yeah, I think Matt Sadler kind of spoke there and he talked about maybe riding the emotions, just letting these players feel it for now.

03:43You can't hide away from the devastation.

03:46And then, you know, they'll get home, review things and pick themselves up and go again.

03:51But it's, I mean, we kind of spoke about how we fear how things could go with a psychological glow of Horsall dropping into the playoffs.

03:59And, I mean, in the manner in which they did it in the end.

04:02I was going to say, is it almost worse, is it almost worse the manner that happened today for them to pull themselves back up?

04:08Or do you think that the performance and the 1-0 win can give them the confidence going into that game?

04:14If they'd lost 2-0 today and Bradford had won, you'd rather this performance, I guess.

04:18And, you know, you can't help what happened at Bradford.

04:20But in terms of taking the positives, finally getting that monkey off the back in terms of that win, going into that game,

04:26knowing what a winning feeling feels like, at least that's going to give them a little bit of confidence going forward

04:32into next Sunday.

04:33Yeah, well, I mean, you know, during this sort of wretched run of, I think, two wins, well, three wins now, in 21 games,

04:40Sadler's talked about, you know, instances of wanting to draw a line in the sand.

04:45Hopefully this can be the moment that they'll finally do that.

04:48You know, we thought the Morecambe and Chesterfield wins were going to be that moment.

04:52And in February, unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

04:54Obviously, that last five minutes against Cheltenham, you know, that gives me the shivers thinking about that now.

04:59That was a decisive conjunction of the season, really.

05:03And there's been lots of those moments.

05:07Hopefully, though, this can be the turning point and they can really take that momentum

05:10and the performance from today into the playoffs because it's going to be cute.

05:14Crew-0, also, for all the post-match reaction, make sure you log on to expressandstar.com.

05:19We shall see you next Sunday in the playoffs at Chesterfield.

Crewe 0 Walsall 1 - George Bennett and Nathan Judah analysis

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