Paul Thirlwell looks ahead to the run-in
Club captain Paul Thirlwell admitted that it’s been a disappointing season for all concerned this week but he insisted that the lads are fully focused on picking up points as the end-of-season run-in looms large.
“We all know it hasn’t been good in terms of consistency,” he said.
“It’s been very disappointing at times but we know what we’ve got inside the dressing room and we know what we can be. What we have to do is make sure we don’t dwell on what’s happened too much and focus on what we can change - and that’s the last eight games.”
Echoing the message from the chairman from earlier in the week, he added: “It’s natural that people won’t be happy when things aren’t going well. We can’t expect fans to turn up and be singing and dancing when we’re having a bad run.”
“We’d like to think they’ll stick with us though,” he continued. “We know it’s difficult to do that through the hard times but it’s also when we need it most.
“We’ve got a good group of lads in the dressing room and it’s a period where we need to look to the senior lads to take the lead. We need to drag the younger lads through the bad period and we know whatever happens they’ll all become better people and players for having gone through such a spell.”
“The staff always come in with smiles on their faces, even when they probably don’t feel like it,” he said. “They put on good training sessions to try to help us through and the lads respond to that.
“We just want to do it for ourselves and for the fans now. We want to finish the season off on a high and we want to finish as far up the table as we can.
“We’ve progressed steadily for four years but we’ve had a blip this season. There’s no shying away from that, but we’ll get through it and hopefully leave people feeling optimistic ahead of next year.”
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