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It was without doubt a tired performance from us on Monday night.

You have to take into account that this was our 4th game in 9 days and the second in 48 hours coming on the back of a long round trip to Merthyr, which was played on a heavy pitch, so it is inevitable that it was going to take its toll.

There is no way that the players lacked a desire or passion on Monday night. The main contributing factor is that we have a small squad in comparison to the likes of Nuneaton, Brackley and Farnborough and we are simply not in a position to rotate the squad around. As such, people have got to be realistic and look at what our players have produced so far this season and it is inevitable given the games that we have played in the last week, that it will at some stage take its toll. But the performance on Monday night certainly wasn’t for a lack of passion.

Also, the reason the games were changed to a Monday night was to avoid clashing with live televised football. I think if you look at the midweek attendances across the board, ours actually hold up quite well.

However, I can appreciate that the game itself was not the best. We are struggling getting into games from the off at the moment, and there are also one or two players who are struggling for full fitness. The situation with Lawrie Stewart is that he had a nasty gash on his ankle. I started with him, but it became apparent that he wasn’t going to last the full 90, and I then put Matty Haniver on and had to take him off as he hasn’t fully recovered from his hamstring injury.

The situation with their goal was really a long punt forward from them that got over the head of Lee Chaffey and their scorer got behind Dave Theobald and finished it well. It’s all very well being critical of the back four, but people should remember that when we’ve enjoyed our best spell this season, the back line has been Stewart at right back, Theobald and Chaffey in the middle and Krause at left back. This is exactly the same formation as I had on Monday night.

Before the Hemel goal, we should have scored. John Frendo has had an opportunity where he failed to latch onto a cross and we have also had a blatant penalty appeal turned down. I thought that was poor as the linesman could have helped the referee out a bit with that one, but it never happened.

One thing we did do, and epitomises the team spirit in the camp is that we kept plugging away and right at the death we got our reward. Hemel were very aggrieved as they thought it was offside, but if you look at it, Steve Gentle has done well to get the space, and applied his finish well.

I felt for Hemel as we have been in a situation like that before where the game has been taken from us, and I think they are in a false position too as they are certainly not the worst side we will play all season.

Obviously John Frendo is struggling for a bit of form at the moment and we are finding it difficult to get goals from our forward line. With this in mind, I have made a 7 day approach for Ricky Miller who is a centre forward from Stamford. Also I have made another 7 day approach for Chris Seeby from Northwood who can play at right back, centre half, or as a defensive midfielder.

On the injury front, obviously we have the issue with Lawrie Stewart and his ankle. Also Neil Midgley and Robbie Nightingale have taken knocks as well. We are training on Thursday and we will assess both ahead of the trip to Hednesford.

As for Hednesford, I’m expecting another tough game for us. Since the new manager has come in, they have done reasonably well, and are also one of the highest scorers in the league and their front three are very experienced. So it will be difficult and we will need to put in a big effort to come away with a maximum return.