Stockport boss Dave Challinor saluted hat-trick hero Will Collar after his goals secured a 3-1 FA Cup second-round replay win against League One Charlton.
The managerless Addicks, who sacked Ben Garner on Monday, were poor on the night as County booked a home third-round date against fellow League Two outfit Walsall.
Charlton took the lead through an early Akil Wright own goal but Collar equalised before half-time, put his side ahead with 17 minutes remaining and completed his treble from the penalty spot.
Challinor said: “Fair play to Will, he seems to be finding his goalscoring form from last season again.
“To score a hat-trick on TV is a great achievement, and one he’ll remember for the rest of his life.
“I’m just glad he scored the penalty near the end, though.
“Don’t forget the game was still in the balance at 2-1 at that stage and Paddy Madden is our regular penalty taker, but he stuck it away well.
“He’ll get the plaudits now of course, but he deserves the credit as he’s been great for us recently.”
Challinor was less impressed with Charlton substitute George Dobson, who appeared to shove Macauley Southam-Hales forcefully into the pitch-side hoardings during a challenge late in the game, leading to a lengthy stoppage.
“Macauley’s a very lucky boy,” said Challinor.
“He’s got a big egg-sized lump on the back of his neck so he’s gone off to hospital.
“If that wasn’t endangering an opponent, I don’t know what is.
“Mac’s probably about an inch away from suffering a fractured skull – it’s scary, especially after what we saw happen to the Bath City player (Alex Fletcher) the other week.
“Hopefully he’ll come away from the incident unscathed, but it wasn’t nice and it won’t look good on the replays.”
Anthony Hayes was in caretaker charge of Charlton and he bemoaned his side’s weakness at set-pieces.
“It was a bit of a scrappy game for the full 90 minutes in many ways,” he said.
“I don’t think there was much between the two teams on the night, but we know Stockport are good at what they do.
“We lacked a bit of flow in that first half, but we’d got the early goal and that should have settled us down a bit.
“In the second half, though, we were affected by injuries and stoppages, that interrupted our rhythm.
“In the end, though, we just didn’t defend well enough.
“We’ve ended up conceding two really disappointing goals from set-plays again, and that’s proved costly.
“I tried to change things around a bit more in the second half. We switched the formation around, but those changes didn’t really pay off at all.
“We’ve been a bit too fragile at set-plays on the night, and this is what happens.”
