Pompey boss John Mousinho chats to The News after the Blues' victory over the O's in the RFL Trophy
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00:00 So Jon, a 2-1 win at Laing Norwitz, progressing the cup. Hard fork, said when you played 71
00:06 minutes with 10 men.
00:07 Yeah, exactly that, really hard fork, with a lot of quality I think in there as well.
00:12 We had the ball for a limited amount of time but when we did have it I thought we created
00:17 chances. The second goal was particularly pleasing in terms of what we knew we could
00:21 hurt them with. We weren't really getting a huge amount of pressure on the ball which
00:26 was fine, that was the plan, but when we did get the ball we knew we could hurt them with
00:29 a bit of pace on the turnover. Overall really, really delighted with the result first of
00:33 all, particularly the second half performance, thought the lads were excellent. Going into
00:36 90 minutes without much in the tank I thought they were some really, really good individual
00:41 and collective performance today was great.
00:44 What did you make of the sending off?
00:45 I thought it was a sending off, I was frustrated with how it came about because we had a throw
00:49 in down our side, we decided to abandon the middle of the pitch and that's where the head
00:54 had dropped down to, they were on the second ball. Broke from there, probably made a poor
00:58 decision trying to go tight with the centre forward who then I think spun off right at
01:01 his shoulder and Sean unfortunately came and cut across him in the back. I didn't actually
01:06 have any complaints with that to be honest. Then obviously had to react after going down
01:11 to send them in.
01:13 You dug deep and especially after the result on Sunday.
01:16 Yes, one of the things we felt coming into the game was that we needed to respond and
01:21 then all of a sudden within however many minutes, if it was 20 minutes, we'd come off the back
01:25 of the first loss in a long time on Sunday. Losing a couple of key players to injuries
01:31 and then losing Sean to a red card, it felt like a lot was going against us. In a game
01:35 that we didn't necessarily need to win but we wanted to win and we wanted to put in a
01:40 good performance and obviously get the result. It was tough to be honest, especially as the
01:45 first shape I think that we tried didn't work and we tried to change that really quickly
01:48 and I think as soon as we changed that, things started to work a lot better.
01:51 What did that performance and the manner of the victory today say about your side?
01:56 I think it says a huge amount. I'm really, really proud of some of the performances out
02:00 there tonight. There's so many factors you can look at behind everything to be honest
02:07 and I think it says a huge amount about some individuals in the collective. Denver Hulme
02:11 hasn't started a game since April and he played 90 minutes. It didn't look like he was struggling.
02:16 It says everything about his individual character and what he's done over the past few months.
02:21 He's kept himself fit. You had the likes of Cassini-Yenger, his second start off the
02:28 back of a long injury, coming back and really physically looking brilliant even towards
02:33 the back end of the game, really running the channels brilliantly. There's quite a few.
02:38 Harry Drew at White's hardly played a game at all on loan to Havent. He came in tonight
02:41 and had to play a couple of different positions and he had a real good involvement in the
02:46 first goal as well. That's from an individual point of view. I thought it was brilliant.
02:50 And then just the way the lads made sure they kept the ball out of the net in the second
02:54 half, obviously, by scoring the goal which we were disappointed with. After that I thought
02:59 we looked like a really solid side and of course we had to dig in at times and we had
03:03 to defend the box well but we did it brilliantly and the character we've got in there just
03:08 shone through tonight.
03:09 Do you look, bearing in mind what happened today as well and other games in the season,
03:12 do you look at Sunday as a blip?
03:16 Hopefully, yeah. Hopefully. It was probably one of the games, one of the only games of
03:24 the season where I do feel we've been outplayed and obviously we lost the game but a good
03:31 comparison I think to everybody that follows Portsmouth week in, week out would be the
03:34 Chesterfield game to the Derby game. So say we nick a last minute goal against Chesterfield
03:38 and we draw 1-1 and we're in the hat for the second round. It would have been a complete
03:41 contrast to what we did at Derby where I thought we dominated the game and we were fully deserving
03:45 of it. We wouldn't have deserved it on Sunday but it did feel like it was a blip because
03:48 it was the only time it's really happened this season and we obviously have to make
03:51 sure it doesn't happen again and it was frustrating and everybody went into the game with higher
03:56 expectations but yeah that's the whole point of trying to get back on the horse tonight
04:02 and win the game. I think that's gone the wrong way to make sure we get a bit of momentum
04:06 going into the weekend and yeah, only time will tell but from our point of view we want
04:10 to make sure it was just a blip.
04:12 And then the next round into the competition?
04:13 Yeah and that's a really important thing for a number of reasons. First of all we wanted
04:16 to win the game, it's another step towards Wembley. It's a really good competition that
04:19 the club's got a massive amount of history in and everybody I think takes a lot of pride
04:25 in first of all winning games but also being able to do it in a competition that sometimes
04:29 people don't put a huge amount of importance on. Hopefully you can see even though we make
04:33 changes we take everything really seriously and we want to win the game and there's also
04:39 the factor that's really benefited us I think in the league this year which is when players
04:43 have come in and haven't played a huge amount of league minutes the cup competitions have
04:47 afforded them that much fitness that they maybe otherwise wouldn't have had and that's
04:51 been really really important for us. The biggest one I can think of is the Port Vale game where
04:56 Sean and Ben Stevenson came in without having started the league game because they had the
05:01 fitness thing, they had four games, four cup games in the tank. They looked like they were
05:06 doing it and fitted into the team. So a number of factors, least of all because we just want
05:13 to win games but I think it is really important for us to progress.