Emotional Chester boss shares pride in 'historic' Hartlepool United FA Cup triumph and reveals winning game plan

McIntyre’s National League North side executed their game plan to perfection to stifle Hartlepool – scoring two excellent goals in the process.

McIntyre suggested in the build-up to the game his side would head to the North East full of belief they could cause an upset, and so it proved as the Seals eased into the first round against a toothless Pools.

An emotional McIntyre heaped huge praise onto his players, and the football club, for their endeavours, whilst sharing his pride in what he described as an historic performance.

"I want to congratulate the players on a terrific, and historic, performance that puts the club in the first round of the FA Cup,” said McIntyre.

"I thought we saw everything I want a Chester side to be; hard-working, organised, disciplined.

"I’ve talked about being emotionally detached, but the little boy inside of me is jumping up and down, screaming, to be in the first round proper of the FA Cup, and to do it with Chester is emotional.

"These are the days you really have to savour. It’s emotional in the best possible way to achieve what we’ve achieved.”

Chester’s victory was their first at Hartlepool in over 50-years and means John Askey's side will not be involved in the first round of the competition for the first time in almost 100 years.

And when asked to dissect the performance from his players, McIntyre was thorough in his assessment of how his side carried out his game plan.

"We did a lot of work and watched Hartlepool’s last three games and recognised trends,” said McIntyre.

"We knew they wouldn’t change their team, despite some of the noises. They’ve been searching for a win for a while and they got one last week, so we knew they'd be unchanged.

"First they’ll play through Featherstone, and when they can’t do that Tom Crawford will go and get the ball a little bit deeper and then they’ll swing one wing-back down. So we changed shape and set up to nullify them."

McIntyre added: “We knew they’d concede a goal, I think they’ve got a record here of something like 18 without a clean sheet, so we really looked into that.

"The plan was to try and win the game 1-0 and then Charlie spoiled that when he scored the second.

"It was a counter-attacking performance. They will commit four onto your backline with the two wing-backs and the two centre-forwards. They’ll put the two centre-midfielders in wide areas and play a back four to get the wide overloads, so we had to pick our moments.

"The goals are a reflection of an organised and a disciplined performance. You can dominate the ball or you can pick those moments and I thought we had three or four really good counter-attacks where the players deserve massive congratulations.

“What we’ve given the supporters is an experience, some memories and some history.

“I hope we get a draw the supporters want. I know some people looked at this draw as an undesirable one. I thought it was a winnable one, but we did that together.”