It was a disappointing result on Saturday as we could have gone third in the league but it seems someone up there doesn’t like us.

We had a difficult game on a heavy pitch but we gave another good account of ourselves in the second half and we seem to be involved in some very entertaining games at the minute.

I changed the way we would play on Saturday with Alex Taylor [hernia] not able to play and the lads just weren’t able to get the ball down against the Stocksbridge defence.

Obviously the pitch was barely playable and it was unpassable, causing us problems at time, but in the second half we put big Rory [Winters] up front with Shaun Gardner and I thought we had a good go and on another day we would have taken the points.

We tried to play a little too much football and we didn’t realise how bad it was. We came in at half time and I told them to forget the pass and go route one.

I thought we had the majority of the play but two poor defensive goals were given away and it was 3-0, putting us up against it.

But we showed heart and certainly tried to put the work in late on.

The goals came too late and we had too little time to salvage the points and we now have a massive game on Saturday at Matlock Town.

In seasons gone by we would have really struggled without having David Newnes, Alex Taylor, Danny Wisdom and Carl Osman unavailable but we have some good lads who have come in and did well.

Stuart Howson was outstanding in the centre of defence and showed he could be a leader and Cieran Donnelly had a good game too. They both added to the team and we played technically better and I am sure they will both play a big part this season.

We have had two big training sessions this week ahead of a difficult trip to Matlock and I have my fingers crossed we will have some of our injured players back for Saturday.

When the lads are fit we will have a large squad but everyone is chomping at the bit to play.