FC Halifax Town 1-0 Alfreton: Heath hails a vital victory over Alfreton

The win was Town’s fourth in five games and maintains their four point cushion ahead of sixth-place in the promotion race.

The Shaymen never reached top gear in the contest, but Tom Denton’s second-half header proved decisive against the National League North strugglers.

“It’s just about the results now,” said Heath. “If we can entertain and win the games then that’s great but the main thing is we win the games, and we make no apologies for that.

“We were second best in the first-half, didn’t really get going at all. Second-half we were better, put them under pressure, asked more questions of them.

“But we looked jaded, looked tired, but we got the three points.”

Heath wasn’t encouraged by Town’s overall play, but felt The Shaymen at least improved in the second-half after a disappointing opening 45.

“Very rarely did we have chances in the first-half, but we had lots of corners and lots of play in and around the box in the second-half,” he said.

“You looked at it and thought ‘is it going to be one of them where something doesn’t fall for us, we pick the wrong pass or we take the wrong option’, but Dents has got a great header, he was exactly where we need him to be in the middle of the goal.

“I don’t think he’s the most fluent player the world’s ever seen but he’s effective.

“He’s got his strengths that other players don’t have and he’s got weaknesses that other players are better at. If he had an all-round game he wouldn’t be playing at this level.

“Her’s got an important goal and I think he’ll get more important goals before the season’s finished.”

Heath wants his side to improve their service to Denton, who he felt was feeding off scraps in the match.

“If you put the crosses in the area, he’ll score goals. The problem we have at the minute is we don’t put the ball in the area enough for him,” Heath said.

“Sometimes he does pull on the far post too often, and we’ve spoken about that, he has to get himself more in the middle at times, but sometimes our crossing isn’t fantastic and we don’t deliver enough balls into him.

“Everybody wants to see us playing good football but there’s no point having Tom Denton in the side if you don’t cross the ball.

“We’ve got to cross the ball into him more.”

Adam Morgan was once again an unused substitute in the game, but Heath said Town are not playing a style of football conducive to Morgan’s game.

Heath added: “He’s training well, his attitude is really good, but at the end of the day there are certain times, like today, where we’re not getting the ball down as much as we’d like and linking it together, so we have to go a different way and use brute force.

“That was the case today and that’s been the case in the last few games. Peniket and Denton are two big, strong chaps and that’s the way it is.”