Baird: Eastleigh can bounce back

By Wendy Gee -

Eastleigh boss Ian Baird (pictured) is usually strong in the face of defeat, but last Saturday’s 3-2 FA Cup exit at Woking hurt him more than most.

“I woke up at seven o’clock on the Sunday morning and I felt like staying in bed all day,” he confessed.

And, even now, as he sets about putting the broken pieces back together again for tomorrow’s league visit of Boreham Wood, the pain still lingers.

“I still haven’t recovered from it," he said. “It wasn’t like losing to Burgess Hill a couple of years ago because, on that day, we deserved to lose.

“At Woking we didn’t – and it’s massive kick in the teeth.”

Having scored inside 80 seconds, the Spitfires should have been home and dry in the first 20 minutes. But a combination of poor finishing, bad decision-making and slap-dash defending handed the game to Woking on a plate.

And Baird’s mood didn’t get any better on Sunday when the Cards were drawn away to his old club Brighton & Hove Albion in the first round proper.

“It was a massive opportunity for us and the disappointment for me stems from the fact that we didn’t deserve to get beaten,” he said. “Hearing Woking’s reaction afterwards was a real kick in the proverbials and I felt sicker still when I heard the draw.”

Now, having had almost a week to mull things over, Baird is ready to come out fighting again and is determined to use the Woking setback as a springboard for league glory.

“Our objective is to get into the play-offs and that’s what we’ll do,” he pledged.

“What happened last week has certainly heightened my resolve to achieve that.

“Like a boxer, we’ve been knocked down, but we’ll get back up again and we’ll win the fight in the end.

“We’ve got to use this as a platform to get us to where we want to be and there’s no doubt in my mind that we’re good enough to achieve that.”

One player who got a particularly rough ride at Woking was defender Luke Byles, who recently returned to the club after a season in Australia.

Byles, usually such a class act at left-back, struggled to cope with the pace and trickery of Woking’s outstanding right winger Moses Ademola.

“Luke was the first one to put his hand up and say he didn’t have a good game,” said Baird. “But the way I see it, he’s been on the other side of the world for the best part of 14 months, not exactly living a monastic lifestyle. He’s had no pre-season and the standard of football he was playing out there was not the same intensity as this.

“When he came back he had an illness which knocked him out for ten days and he’s not as fit as he’d like to be. But, Bylesy being Bylesy, he’s getting through on blood, sweat and tears.”

Peter Adeniyi and Shaun McAuley are not yet 100 percent after long-term injury, but both are likely to be on the bench again tomorrow.

Reflecting on the task ahead, Baird said: “Boreham Wood were promoted through the play-offs and haven’t had a good start, but our nemesis ever since I’ve been at Eastleigh has been slip-ups against lower sides.

“But we didn’t let it happen against Dartford (a 3-0 Eastleigh win) and we can’t let it happen against Boreham Wood.

“I could have a knee-jerk reaction to the Woking defeat and change the side tomorrow but, apart from a couple of stupid mistakes, I thought we did well last week – and that’s what hurts the most.”