FC St. Pauli

Head coach Alexander Blessin: "We're obviously very satisfied with the result, but also with the performance after a very eventful week. A good performance against Frankfurt was followed by our worst so far at Bochum. I have to take my hat off to the team for the reaction they showed today. A lot of what we set out to do today came off. I'm proud the team showed such a reaction. We deserved the points today and we know it's merely a snapshot, but we have to keep going like this."

Johannes Eggestein: "We were under a bit of pressure after the defeat at Bochum. We wanted to go really hard at Heidenheim, which you saw today especially in the first half. We knocked the ball around nicely and put Heidenheim under a lot of pressure. After the break we saw the game out quite cleverly. We've shown how well we can defend all season. It's repeatedly brought us points and did so again today. It was a great move from us that led to the penalty. It was definitely a penalty for me. And we got our reward with the second just before the end. It will do us good to have scored more than one. We went into the second half of the season with the intention of winning the games against our nearest rivals. In the first half we dropped a few points against teams who are down there with us. We lost to Heidenheim in the reverse fixture despite performing well, and we got the points back again today."

James Sands: "We knew it would be tough and we'd have to fight and run hard. It felt good to be in the starting lineup. It was a good start but I can do better. The important thing was that we won the game. It was nice to play alongside Jackson. We found a good balance."

Noah Weißhaupt: "We fought as a team. Whenever a Heidenheim player broke through, someone else was there. We fought for each other and that brought us the win. It was a complete team performance. We were superb as a team and got our reward."

Oladapo Afolayan: "I tried to help the team when I came on. We had a bit of luck at the end. I stayed up front after the disallowed goal and was able to lay the ball off for Morgan."

Frank Schmidt (Heidenheim head coach): "Little of what we set out to do came off. In the first half there weren't many highlights in front of goal. It came down to who made the first mistake and that was us before the opening goal. First, we gave the ball away too easily, and then we gave the opposition player and the referee the opportunity to accept the holding. Taking the lead helps you in games like this one and it certainly helped St. Pauli, who defend very well and compact and did that again today. At half-time we made changes to our tactics and our lineup. We had a lot of the ball and worked hard but didn't come up with any solutions until we got the equaliser that never was, which would have done us good and rewarded us for all the effort. We then conceded the second straightaway and it was all over. It was a deserved win for St. Pauli."

Photos: FC St. Pauli/Witters