After that dreadful opener things could surely only get better in the next two games away from Aggborough.

Thankfully, the team pulled a performance out of the hat at Burton and battled to earn a point. Saturday’s trip to Northwich was also hardworking and, although not pretty, fully deserving of the three points. So, two away games played, four points in the bag; a considerable improvement on recent seasons.

At Burton I felt that we could have come away with all three points. For a spell in the second half we had them rocking and when the equaliser came I thought Mark Yates should have made a substitution; I would have taken off Luke Reynolds and either Russ Penn (who was knackered) or Dwayne Lee (who had done nothing) and sent on Andy White and Dean Sturridge, switched to 4-4-2 and pressed for a winner. In fact just before we scored it looked like Sturridge was about to get stripped ready to come on but he didn’t. Looks like Yates has picked up a trait of Graham Allner’s; he used to get subs ready and then change his mind if we scored. All that said it was still a good point to get us off and running.

The game at Northwich never really came to life for me and was quite dull, particularly in the first half. When the substitution of Sturridge for Lee was made I thought that we were sure to add to our score as we created chance after chance. Even though we didn’t add to the score and had to hang on a little in the closing stages it was good to see Sturridge is getting sharper the more training and match time he has.

Saturday’s visit of Weymouth should be an interesting contest as they are the early pacesetters with three wins from three games.  As long as we show the same level of application as in the last two games everything should be OK, we don’t need a repeat of opening day to drive the crowds down further.

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