Joel Byrom set up Mark Roberts for Boro’s second in Bury win

JOEL Byrom said Stevenage’s second goal on Saturday was made in Hitchin.

Both Byrom, who supplied the cross, and captain Mark Roberts, who headed past Trevor Carson, live in the same block of flats in Hitchin, and the Boro midfielder said he instinctively knew where his team-mate would be before putting the ball straight on to Roberts’ head.

“It was straight from Hitchin, straight from the flat,” Byrom told The Comet. “As soon as the ball came back to me I just knew I was putting it in and he knew where I was putting it and it was a great header in the end. It was a perfect [run].”

Byrom said Boro deserved the win on Saturday, and said his team had forced Bury to adopt a more direct approach in the second half which suited Stevenage’s strengths.

“We worked hard, we worked for every ball like we normally do and it was great to get a well earned result in the end.

“It shows how far we’ve come as a team and a squad. We came here and got beat 3-0 last year which was obviously a comfortable result for them but today we made it hard work, and we earned the result in the end.

“They’ve got some nice footballers but we had a game plan, we came here, we worked hard, we put pressure on the ball and tried to force them into errors and when we got the ball we looked to get forward and get goals.

“We forced them into playing it a bit longer and it suited us a little bit. We worked hard to get on top of them all over the pitch and we carved out a few chances out in the end and probably should have had more.”