Consistency is key to Bamber Bridge’s future success

Brig secured an impressive 3-0 victory over FC United 3-0 of Manchester last weekend, but that result came off the back of a 5-0 defeat at Scarborough the week before.

And Milligan said his players need to start stringing longer runs of positive results together, starting with tomorrow’s trip to Morpeth Town.

He said: “I’ve said this before – when the lads are on it there’s not many better than them.

“What we need to do now is we need to start building a little bit of consistency, because that’s why teams like FC United, South Shields, Warrington and Lancaster are up there.

“They have consistency, they’ll win three or four, maybe draw or lose and then they’ll go on another run.

“We’re a bit like win two, lose one and draw one, so we need to start building up a bit of consistency if we want to compete against them.”

Following the Morpeth clash, Brig face a Lancashire FA Challenge Trophy semi-final clash against Prestwich Heys and Milligan says his players are ready to take on both games.

He said: “Like I said on Tuesday night, I said to the players well done on the FC United game, but they’ve got a massive game on Saturday at Morpeth and then we’ve got a big semi-final to play for.

“It’s an exciting challenge for the lads. They all want to play in the big games which is fair play to them.”

Morpeth are currently in a mid-table spot, but they have games in hand on all the teams above them and could still force their way into the play-off reckoning.

Milligan added: “They’re a decent outfit. If we’re going to compete and get a result against them then we need to be on it like we were last Saturday.”

In terms of injuries, there was more positive news on the status of captain Matt Lawlor, who is now around a week away from returning to full training after suffering a knee injury on Boxing Day.

Milligan was also full of praise for Alistair Waddecar, who is currently playing through a hernia problem suffered before Christmas.

Waddecar opened the scoring against FC United on Saturday in his first start since picking up the injury.

“Ali’s battling on, and I thought he was outstanding on Saturday,” he said. “Considering he’d not trained for a quite a while, the shift he put in was unbelievable.”