Yesterday couldn’t have been more non-league; our coach turned up an hour late and Rushden’s pitch was as heavy as it could possibly be without being postponed - it was horrendous. There was great partisan support from Rushden’s home crowd and our own Darlaston massive, either on the coach with us or driving down, and to top it off a cheeky 3 points and clean sheet - not bad craic for Darlo!

Three weeks without a game meant it was always going to be a challenge to find our rhythm, add to that we had no time for any warm up of note as we didn’t land till 2.20pm! However, we discussed before the game that no excuses would be accepted and to everyone’s credit, we were excellent from the first to the last whistle, with some top, top drawer performances. As a group the level of maturity and unity is/was unreal, we asked them to keep a clean sheet no matter what for the first 70 minutes then to take the points in the last 20 minutes when we bring on the substitutes, Peo, Rivel and Tyler - all strong boys on a quagmire of a pitch.

Individually, Lewis and Cheza were both outstanding again, but Bish takes the man of the match due to his last 20 minutes - monster.

Results were interesting again yesterday with some results going for us and some not, but the honest truth is we don’t care about anyone else but ourselves, we have the same challenges everyone has but our destiny is in our hands.

Yesterday’s game is exactly the half way point of the season and as yet we haven’t had a poor performance - some achievement for me that, I’m very proud of the team, we’re now 17 points above the bottom four with a superior goal difference.

From the remaining 20 league games we’re four more wins away from safety for the season, nine more wins for a top half finish and fourteen wins to make the play offs. To still be in the play offs in the middle of December is just crazy and extremely enjoyable, we’re going to keep going till the very last kick of the season and enjoy every bloody second.

Wednesday, we have Anstey Nomads at home, they sit one place above us on goal difference, hopefully we can make it a positive Darlaston environment and get a big crowd in to support the team.

UTD

Dean.