Bamber Bridge spirit is the key to signing new players, says captain and player-coach Matt Lawlor.

With one of the smallest budgets in the NPL Premier Division, Brig cannot compete on a financial level with many of their rivals.

After losing both Brad Carsley and Paul Dawson to Lancaster City in recent weeks, boss Mick Taylor has been eager to bolster his squad as they look to keep themselves away from the bottom reaches of the division.

So far he has been frustrated in his bid for reinforcements and Lawlor revealed that the club will always face difficulties in that regard.

This weekend, Brig travel to second-placed South Shields – a club which was promoted with Brig last year but benefits from a much 
bigger budget.

“We are trying to bring people in,” said Lawlor, who is also part of the coaching staff at the Sir Tom Finney Stadium.

“We want to improve our squad but it is difficult.

“You look at South Shields – you see these team come up and they are able to improve their squad. They don’t sit on their laurels.

“But they are able to pay lot of money out each week to players, we probably don’t have 20% of their budget.

“So we try to attract players in a different way by creating a good team spirit, togetherness and a good feeling around the club. If you look at our squad, there are a lot of players who have been there a long time. I think me, Alistair Waddecar and Chris Marlow – we have more than a thousand appearances between us.”

Brig’s weekend fixture at Nantwich Town fell foul of the weather.