Giant striker Kyle Hudlin staked his claim ahead of a busy festive schedule when he doubled his total for the season at Plymouth.
The Huddersfield loanee fought off the effects of a bug in the Dons camp and bagged a first-half brace and an assist, as we stormed into a three-goal lead by the break at Home Park. Although Kyle scored from the penalty spot in a shoot-out, after Plymouth levelled the scores in the second half, we exited the Papa John’s Trophy.
“I’m grateful for another opportunity and that I took it,” said Kyle. “That’s all I can do; you have to take it when it comes. I’ve performed again and hopefully I get to play in the next game.
“I feel as though we were very unfortunate, it was a game of two halves. We performed very well and gave our all in the first half, but I kind of felt we were flagging towards the back end of the second half and they capitalised.
“We were up against a really top League One side and their class showed towards the latter stages, but the boys and myself did ourselves very proud and we leave here with a lot of positive things to go into the league with."
“Our form was there earlier in the season. We’ve just been waiting for it to click, and I feel like it has clicked. It’s not just the negatives we take that we lost, we go into the league again trying to express everything that we did right out there.”
Our preparations were hampered by losing players due to illness in the build-up to the third round tie, but that didn’t stop Kyle from giving his all under the circumstances and taking his tally for this season - and for the competition - to four goals.
“I’m trying not to cough!” admitted Kyle afterwards. “We were really feeling the effects of it, that’s why we did ourselves proud. We said in the dressing room that we couldn’t have given it more. I do believe the illness affected our fitness levels, due to how bad it’s been, but we carried out the performance and unfortunately, we fell short.
“Their switches of play were unreal, to be honest. They shifted us around and we just couldn’t maintain the intensity that we had in the first-half."
Pics: Pro Sports Images.
You can see the full interview with Kyle Hudlin below, via the link to our official YouTube channel.