Joel Ward has spoken of his delight at hitting his third goal of the campaign to send Crystal Palace on their way to victory against Southampton.
Making the trip to St Mary’s Stadium for the FA Cup third round tie, Ward opened the scoring on the day and despite the hosts drawing level through Oriol Romeu, Wilfried Zaha’s second gave us the two one win and booked our place in the fourth round.
Speaking to Crystal Palace FC following the game, the right back explained.
‘I think it was on for me to get forward as they`d made a mistake and we capitalised on it and Punch set off, so I thought I might as well just go. Punch was very calm and I gave him a shout as I was coming into the box and he`s put it right in my path. It`s always nice to score a goal and thankfully I was in the right place at the right time and kept cool and slotted it in. I think we performed really well, they had a fast start and caused us some problems in the first half but defensively I felt that we coped with it very well, stayed in the game and took our chance when it came. We dug in deep in the second half and Wilf has done ever so well to hit the target and put the ball in the back of the net.’
With January being a busy time for Palace with the way the fixtures fall, the fourth round tie at the end of the month adds to that and we now go into matches against Aston Villa and Manchester City, but Ward said he felt the squad were dealing well fitness wise given the quick turnaround in matches.
‘I`m feeling good and I think we`re a good group and the staff are looking after us. Training is good and the morale and fitness is going well and we`ve had a boost with people coming back from injury and people working their way up to match fitness. Somebody at home in the next round would be nice so we`ll just have to wait and see. We`re not too many wins away from the quarters or the semis and we want to go all the way and hopefully we can move on after the next round.’
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