Tamworth boss hails 'brilliant' players after FA Cup upset over Huddersfield

Tamworth manager Andy Peaks expressed his delight after his team's 1-0 victory over Huddersfield, attributing the win to their hard work over the past two years. The National League side advanced to the second round following a surprising defeat of League One Huddersfield, with the only goal coming from a Chris Maxwell own goal.

Peaks remarked: "We were looking forward to it because if you can’t enjoy nights like this, you shouldn’t be involved in football."

He added, "Obviously the result makes it 10 times better but I wanted people to come and celebrate what we’ve done the last couple of years and this was a reward to get a tie like Huddersfield and then be on TV."

Peaks also commented on his team's style of play: "People have said about the way we play, we play like that every game, we’ve not got loads and loads of extremely skilful players, we just work hard, we’ve got a good shape, they put a good shift in."

Before the match, he encouraged his players: "I said to them before the start, whatever happens do yourself justice, don’t let it pass you by, and they didn’t, they were brilliant."

In contrast, Huddersfield's manager Michael Duff offered a stark assessment of his team's performance, conceding that they were outplayed at The Lamb Ground. Duff stated: "Not good enough. Outrun, outfought, outbattled, beaten by a better team in the end."

He criticised the team's start and lack of quality: "Started the game really poorly, concede a goal from the obvious threat, no quality in our play, every cross went in the keeper’s hands."

Duff lamented the upcoming negative media attention: "We’ll be all over the papers tomorrow for all the wrong reasons. I said to the players in the meeting room, ‘make sure your heads are right’, and they clearly weren’t."

"There’s no excuses. We’ve played three different formations, we’ve had a lot of the ball but not sure the keeper has made enough saves, and if we’d have started the game like we did from the 80th minute onwards we’d have been all right, but we didn’t."