Peterborough Sports are ready to fight for their National League North lives
Peterborough Sports manager Phil Brown has urged his players to scrap for every remaining National League North point.
The city side start a 21-game fight for survival with home games against play-off candidates Chester (Saturday, 3pm) and Macclesfield Town (Tuesday, January 27, 7.45pm).
Sports have slipped back into the relegation places after a run of six games without a win, but their cause is far from hopeless. Brown’s men are two places and two points from safety, but they have two games in hand on the three teams directly above the drop zone.
Sports are without centre-forward Mark Jones for four games after he received his second red card of the season in the defeat at Merthyr last weekend. Brown will also serve a touchline ban tomorrow after upsetting the officials in South Wales.
Sports are trying to sign re-inforcements, although key men Sam Straughan-Brown, Ben Beresford and Charlie Hickingbottom could play a part against Chester after recent injury issues.
“The simple message to the players, fans and the chairman is we are fighting for our lives,” Brown told Peterborough Community Radio. “It’s vital we don’t leave the comeback too late. We must roll our sleeves up and scrap for every point. That has been drilled into the players to make sure we don’t get relegated.
"We must put our A game on the table. The wheels haven’t come off, but we’ve been derailed a bit lately. We must play with passion for the cause and we must play with a real sense of purpose as soon as we cross that white line, in the right way, not by getting sent off.
“We all love a scrap and I love a challenge and we have that here. We have a test tomorrow. The league table tells us Chester are a better side than us, but we have beaten good sides this season and we’re not bad at home.
"We do have players coming back and the chairman is trying to extend the budget to get a player of real substance into the club.”