Magpies captain Andrew Teague still believes greats escape is on

The Magpies skipper arrived at Victory Park from Lancaster City nearly a decade ago – signed by Garry Flitcroft.

Since then it’s just been one success story after another under Flitcrof initially and his sucessors Matt Jansen and current boss Jamie Vermiglio.

The club has won promotion three times to rise from the NPL First Division North to its current position in the National League.

Unfortunately, this season appears to have been a step too far as Chorley – a part-time oufit – have come unstuck in a division made up predominantly of full-time operations.

The club is currently rock bottom of the table, having won only four league games all season and 11 points adrift of safety.

“It has been a hard season,” said Teague. “I have been at the club nearly 10 years now and it’s probably the first time when it’s been difficult and we’ve not been winning games week-in, week-out like we have been doing previously. It’s a new situation for me and the club in the last few years.

“We still believe we can stay up, but if the worst comes to the worst and we do go down, then it’s how the players and the club reacts to that disappointment after enjoying so much success.”

While that discussion is for another day, Teague is still hopeful that it won’t come to that and the Magpies somehow scrape the points they need to retain their status in the division.

Teague is under no illusions that it’s going to take a minor miracle, but there is still hope with 13 games of the season left to play.

If the great escape is going to happen, then this weekend’s fixture away at second-bottom Ebbsfleet United must surely have to end in three points for Vermiglio’s men.

They are currently four points shy of the Reds and if they were to fall seven behind that would psychologically be a huge blow for the club.

“People have said, it’s a six pointer and it is,” said Teague.

“It’s going to be very difficult going to their place, but we believe that we can get something from the game.

“It is all or nothing now – we need wins. We had no game last weekend, so we had some extra training to work on a few things.

“We have got to start this great escape and start it this weekend. It looks tough on paper as it is now, but there’s 13 games left and we know it’s still possible.

“There’s usually one team who gets sucked back into the relegation zone and one team which puts a run together and manages to get out of it – I am hoping we can do that.”