Tomorrow’s game against Port Vale sees a much earlier kick off time of 12.30pm, as the country prepares to bid a fond final farewell to HRH Prince Philip when his funeral is broadcast live at 3pm.
Looking ahead to facing the Valiants, who have embarked on a six-game winning streak ahead of their trip to Brunton Park, Chris Beech said: “The earlier kick off doesn’t really affect us in any real way.
“We generally train around that time anyway, so it’s the same. With us getting back from Newport very early on Wednesday morning we’ll have built our week around that.
“Whatever we do to recover, and whatever our unbeaten run is, none of that matters. It’s only Port Vale and what we do against them that matters.
“Winning six games in a row is a team in form, we’re fully aware that we’ll have to be at it to deal with them. If they keep that going they can reach 69 points, and that’s something they’ll be looking to achieve.
“Darrell [Clarke] has gone in there and he’s a good manager. He knows the division and his players have responded. They’ll know where they can get to if they win every game. I’d like it if we could win every game as well, but there’s no point looking at the fixtures and the table and thinking about what might be.
“I’m more for looking at the next opponent and dealing with that. The lads just have to ignore the background noise and concentrate on opportunity. There’s one there, we’ve worked so hard to get there, with more discrepance than any other club to get to this position.
“Let’s try and embrace it, honour it, but it’s a football match, it’s Port Vale on Saturday. It’s winnable and losable, we have to make sure we’re ready for it and respect them, of course we will.”
“But it is no concern at all to me about going on some sort of run, or doing certain things,” he continued. “It’s as simple as this, we’ve got a good team to play against on Saturday, we’ve got an excellent home record to protect and enhance.
“What we need to do is make sure we recover, get home well and have a real good go against a strong Vale team.
“We’ve said this before, but these are new experiences for the majority of our players. Rod, Lewi and Paul are experienced, Paul helped Lincoln get promoted to the league – but compared to some teams we’re very inexperienced.
“But we’ve just got to enjoy and embrace. This season has been a complete success if you want to measure finance to product. It really has. It’s been excellent how the players have represented that.
“The club had to protect itself when there’s been no supporters in the ground. We’re working really hard to try and gain something. I said 11 games ago we have to try and get behind a situation that we might make something of.
“If we do, well done, if we don’t, well done, but I want something, of course I do. But, and I’ll repeat this again, you can’t get anything until you play your next opponent, so just concentrate on that.”