Dollies' play-off bid hit

The Dolly Blues are six points shy of the top five – with Clitheroe and Burscough set to meet last night – with five games to play, starting at Mossley on Saturday.

But with all the sides above City having games in hand, Brown knows full well that finishing the season with 15 points out of 15 might not be enough to extend his side’s campaign beyond April 
23.

Things did not go his side’s way on Easter Monday with the Blues stumbling to a 2-2 draw at Kendal Town, while rivals Clitheroe and Burscough both won.

Brown said: “The bigger picture is I’m not sure 74 points is going to be enough to make the play-offs. We’ll have to wait and see.

“There’ll be ups and downs – that’s the nature of the beast. We’ll keep going until it’s mathematically impossible.”

Brown was keen to take the positives after the derby stalemate at Parkside Road with his players needing to keep up the pressure at Mossley.

The Blues boss said: “We’ll train Thursday night and have a bit of a chat.

“The players need to pick themselves up – they’ve got a game of football to look forward to, Mossley away.

“It’ll be tougher than Kendal, certainly in terms of the physicality.

“We didn’t get beaten – we’re still unbeaten in five league games.

“We’ve just got to kick on, try and maintain a positive outlook and pick up as many points as we can.”

Brown felt his side’s two performances over the Easter weekend were like chalk and cheese.

The Dolly Blues put in a fine display to beat champions- elect Warrington 2-1 on Saturday but were well below par in the 2-2 derby draw at Kendal on Monday.

Brown said: “As good as we were on Saturday, I thought we were poor on Monday.

“I thought we were outstanding on Saturday and I told the players that but we were nowhere near that level against Kendal.

“We scored early, which I thought was going to settle us down but after that we didn’t really get anywhere near our performance level on Saturday.

“We had a couple of chances where we should have gone 2-0 up but we didn’t take them and gradually Kendal came into the game and we found it hard to come out of our own half to be honest.

“I’m disappointed overall with the performance.

“Our mentality wasn’t quite right and that just works its way down.”