Bamber Bridge boss Jamie Milligan will focus on safety ahead of clash with Grantham Town

Milligan’s men return to action at the Sir Tom Finney Stadium on Saturday, with strugglers Grantham Town the visitors.

A win for Brig would see them move on to 37 points from 30 games played, 12 clear of Grantham and the bottom two.

Milligan said: “We’ve been looking up the table for the last few weeks.

“But now you look at the table and we have to beat the ones that are right down there, just to make sure that we get a big gap between us and them.

“Grantham will come and they’ll try to win the game like we will, so it’s going to be a must-win game for the lads and they know that.”

Brig suffered late heartbreak at Nantwich Town last weekend, David Webb’s 88th-minute strike from a corner consigning them to a 3-2 defeat.

The result came after Brig went into the break 2-0 down, with second-half goals from Danny Wisdom and Richie Allen restoring parity. And although admitting that the result was a blow, Milligan is not yet writing off a push towards the upper reaches of the table.

He said: “We needed to win that game really to stay in with a late shout of getting into the play-offs.

“But we’re not writing it off – the lads have got it in them to go on a run, I know they have.

“We just need to tidy up a few mistakes here or there, which we’ve worked on, they’ve watched the videos, but they’re still doing great and I can’t really say a bad thing about them.” On the 
injury front, Milligan revealed top scorer Alistair Waddecar has been diagnosed with a hernia following a visit to a specialist last week.

The Brig boss said they may have take a ‘wait and see’ approach with the forward before making a decision on surgery.

“We’re looking into whether he can play on with it for the next three or four weeks and see where we get in the league table,” Milligan said.

“He’s just going to see how he goes with it, but he’s going to need an operation at some point.”

Captain Matt Lawlor is still out, whilst full-back Matty Thomson made his full return from injury at right-back in the Nantwich defeat and could keep his place.