Double defeat will spur Brig on, say boss Jamie Milligan

Brig lost 3-1 to last season’s league leaders South Shields at Irongate on Saturday, before suffering a 2-1 defeat at Radcliffe on Tuesday despite having the better of the second half’s play.

They travel to Basford on Saturday to take on a side who have played four of their five games away from home so far this season.

Milligan said: “Basford are a good team, they’ve got a really good manager, they play decent football and it’s going to be another tough game.

“Our lads have got to match that before we start playing our football.”

Brig were 2-0 down after 50 minutes of play on Tuesday night at Radcliffe, but fought back well in the second half and scored through George Thomason.

That set up a grandstand finish, and although Milligan’s men had chances, they were unable to force the equaliser.

Despite the end result, the Brig boss praised the way his side played to get back into the game, although rued the timing of the second goal just after half-time. They’re a massive team and we just invited pressure on,” he explained.

“We’ve just got to stay in the game as long we can, and then it’s a ball in, a scramble and then they forced it in.

“At 2-0 you’re up against it, and then the next 10 minutes after half time we were flattening out a little bit.

“Then we made a change and put Jamal Crawford on, we changed the shape and then we battered them in the last 20 or 25 minutes. “

Having been forced to self-isolate for 14 days due to a positive Covid-19 test, the Brig squad face a hectic upcoming schedule, with the Basford game their fourth in 11 days.

However, Milligan says that he has been encouraged by his side’s showings in the last three games, and wants them to build momentum.

“We’ve got loads of games coming up and it’s not going to stop by the looks of it,” he said.

“We missed two weeks and you could see in the Ashton game that in the first half we were very rusty. In the second half we came alive a bit.

“Against South Shields I thought we were really good, we just weren’t great in both boxes, they were better than us in both boxes. The performance against Radcliffe I thought was outstanding, apart from a couple of mistakes.”