Gale hails his Hawks

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Gale's Hampshire side led twice in an amazing first half at Anfield, but three goals in the second half, against a tiring Blue Square Conference South side, eventually saw Liverpool home 5-2 - with Yossi Benayoun's hat-trick proving decisive.

Gale said: "I'm proud of my side to produce a performance like that. We were magnificent, and for the Liverpool support to give us a standing ovation at the end was fully deserved."

He added: "People laughed when we said we were going to come here and have a go, but we did just that. We scored early on and it took Liverpool a long time to get back at us.

"That should have been the end of it, but we scored almost straight away and I am only disappointed that we let in an equaliser just on half-time. But we were playing against world class players, things like that are going to happen."

He added: "I'd told them we were not here for a jolly-up, we can have a party afterwards.

"There was also no point in just defending, we cannot change the way we play. If you sit back against a team like this you will be murdered, and we certainly were not murdered.

"The fears were that we could have got battered - but that did not happen and that is what has made me proud of my team."

Relieved Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez praised the non-league side, saying: "Credit to them, they did everything they could and when they scored early on it gave them a lot of hope.

"We were very disappointing in the first half, our defending was not good enough. But in the second period we believed they could not keep their high tempo, and that is how it turned out."