Tremendous Town keeper Tyler gifts McNulty early present by saving his blushes

A terrible error by the defender, who turns 30 tomorrow (Thursday) allowed Gavin Williams to gallop clean through on 24 minutes with the score goalless, but the 36-year-old got down brilliantly to save his low effort when left one-on-one and gift the popular defender an early birthday present.

Tyler said: “You’ve just got to stand up as long as possible and make him shoot, give him the decision.

“Macca went to control it and it’s just gone through him, but he’s pulled me out of the mire a few times so you’ve got to back up your team-mates.

“We knew that they’d come at us in the first 15-20 minutes, that was explained to us in the changing room before the game.

“We just need to weather the storm and I think our quality shone throughout the entire 90 minutes.

“Yeah I made a save at 0-0, but I thought we thoroughly deserved it, maybe with more goals, but 4-0 was a good result for us.”

Tyler was in imperious form when called upon on the night, saving Giueseppe Sole’s deflected effort soon after, before ensuring the Hatters kept a clean sheet when he turned substitute John Goddard’s brilliant 30-yard curler over the bar late on.

He said: “We pride ourselves on clean sheets, that’s what the gaffer wants, day in, day out in training. We try and make it hard for our forwards.

“I’m there to save the shots so it was a nice one to have.”

Boss John Still was full of praise for his experienced keeper, as he said: “You want all your players to contribute don’t you. And Mark by his own admission has probably had a quiet 11 games. So that makes that save a much better save because he’s not been flying around his goal every game we’ve played.

“He’s a top class goalkeeper and you want your top players to produce when they need to produce and I think we did that today.”

Striker Mark Cullen then came to the fore with a debatable double in what was a true team performance on the night.

Cullen said: “It’s a great save and he’s a great goalkeeper and he’ll be expecting to save that himself I’d say, but he’s kept the team in it at 0-0 and we’ve pushed on, so it’s a team performance and we all take credit for it.”

It was Tyler’s seventh clean sheet in 11 games this season and he believes the Hatters are finally reaping the benefits of having a more settled defence, especially with the return of young defender Alex Lacey.

“It’s what you get from a settled back four,” he said. “Everyone knows their jobs, obviously Lacey coming back in today he was quality as well.

“Pazza’s (Andy Parry) been outstanding there as well, but hopefully there’s many more (clean sheets) to come.”

Having held strong against early Woking pressure, Tyler felt Town could have won by even more and is hopeful they will go from strength-to-strength.

He added: “We knew they were going to come at us at the start of the game. Like I said we needed to weather the storm, but once that was over and we steadied the ship we could have scored five or six, so on the whole it was a good three points.

“Winning breeds confidence and we’ve had two tough games at home, a tough game Saturday especially, we were in Sunday preparing right for today and worked with the staff and our fitness coach Dave and it was all done professionally.

“I think that’s the most pleasing thing since the gaffer’s come in, he’s done everything properly and you can see we are reaping the rewards.”