Midfielder Jason Kennedy with his reaction to the Exeter City game
Midfielder Jason Kennedy came off the bench to make just his second appearance since the end of January on Thursday evening and his impact was almost immediate as he pounced to grab his twelfth of the season to put United right back in the hunt.We spoke to him about what ultimately became a disappointing evening shortly after full time.
“We’re obviously disappointed,” he said. “We left it late to get the two goals and you’re then looking to see the game out. What you want then is to take it into extra time and hopefully finish on top. We had the momentum after getting back into the game so that was our aim.
“When the third goal went in it’s difficult to put into words how you feel. Football is a rollercoaster and there are always highs and lows. We were at the top of the rollercoaster but at the end of the game we were right back at the bottom. We’ve just got to pick ourselves up and go again.”
“We’ve had a good season but at the moment it doesn’t feel like that,” he added. “We’ve progressed from last season. We’ve got to the play-offs and given a good account of ourselves over the two legs. It just feels disappointing right now, but when we look back we’ll see that the lads have had a good season overall.
“The disappointment will be in everyone’s mind for the next couple of weeks. I’ve experienced this before. It isn’t a very nice feeling, but you grow and gain experience from it which will hopefully make us all stronger.
“There’s a lot of character and experience in the dressing room. Even at two down we never feel beaten, as we’ve shown again. The timing of their last goal just didn’t give us enough chance to get an opportunity to score another.”
Speaking about his return to action, he said: “It was great to get the opportunity to help the lads and get onto the pitch. It was nice to score and get us back in the game but I’d rather we’d won the game and I’d not even been involved, if that was going to be the case.
“I felt good when I came on and I’m looking forward to pre-season already. I think the lads have been superb and I would have loved to have more of an opportunity to play. It’s all hopefully uphill for me now and I can get back in the swing of things.
“As a club since I’ve been here we’ve progressed every season. We’ve been beaten in the play-offs this year so hopefully next year we can go up in the play-offs or, even better, automatically.”
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