How Peterborough Sports players managed to prove their manager wrong, but he's still looking down rather than up

Sports have completed 22 matches in their first season as a step two club and they are sitting in a National League North play-off place looking down on some big names for the level like Kidderminster Harriers, Southport and Boston United.

Sports are at Buxton on Saturday as they try to start another unbeaten run and then host Gloucester City on Tuesday (December 13, 7.45) before their mouthwatering FA Trophy tie at Oldham Athletic on December 17.

"We played Buxton on the first day of the season,” Dean recalled. “We drew, but I panicked after the game. The level frightened me. I couldn’t believe how I’d got things so badly wrong and I felt it was going to be a long season.

"But the players have well and truly shut me up. We have now played every team in the league bar Kettering and we are seventh.

"I’m enjoying the moment, but I’m not looking beyond the next game. We are competing against some big clubs and after every game I still look down the table first to see how the bottom sides have done.

"There is still a long way to go, but the players have done so well I now get frustrated when we lose games against the likes of Scarborough who have a former Manchester United player in charge (Jonathan Greening) and who attracted over 1100 to our game.

"Buxton are a well-financed club with a budget three times the size of ours and it will doubtless be another tough game for us.”