Iron manager Russ Wilcox felt that the striker Rory Fallon’s promising debut could give his team a massive boost ahead of Saturday’s derby versus Doncaster.
United lost 3-2 to Oldham at the weekend, but the display of Fallon offered a positive, with the striker making his first appearance since joining the club.The New Zealand international signed on a three moth deal last week following a successful trial period with the club and made a big impact on his first start.
Fallon put the Iron 2-1 up and, although the Iron went on to lose 3-2, Wilcox felt it was important that the striker had got off to a scoring start.
When speaking to The Iron Player he said: “I think every striker when he comes to a new club wants to get off the mark, to do that on his debut is pleasing for him.
“He will be disappointed that we’ve come away with nothing from the game and Andrew Boyce as well making his full debut and getting a goal.”
The goals understandably delighted Wilcox who revealed that they were all part of the plan for the Iron and something they had been rehearsing on the training pitch.
He said: “We’re so pleased with the quality of the goals. We spoke about and worked on our set plays and said we’d be a major threat from corners.
“Rory’s goal was a great finish. Good link up between him and Paddy and he’s tucked it away nicely so he should go into the weekend full of confidence.”
The Iron boss will hope that Fallon can form a fruitful partnership with fellow striker Paddy Madden as United look to climb up the League One table.
Wilcox hopes that Fallon can offer a different option to the side, but also accepted that his side needed to use the ball a lot better than they did at Oldham.
He said: “It’s something we spoke about for a while (adding a different option). You can get drawn into playing from back to front, but we’ve got to get the ball down and pass a little bit more than we did at Oldham.
“We didn’t keep the ball well enough which then put us under pressure. We spoke about it at half time about getting the ball down and passing it and keeping it.
“There is no way that Oldham are going to score without the ball. We didn’t do that well enough; we’ve worked on that last few days and we hope to be better with the ball on Saturday.”
While Fallon already looks to be an assured addition to the Iron squad, Wilcox confirmed that he was still trying to strengthen his squad further.
See much more from Russ Wilcox, and others, on The Iron Player.