MARK Collier is aiming to knit his Chippenham Town squad together as tightly as possible as the Bluebirds look to improve their results.

In the wake of last week’s disappointing defeat at Bashley, management and players got together to discuss where they fell short.

And Collier reckons he got the intended reaction in a gutsy performance at promotion-chasers St Albans City on Monday, despite a 1-0 defeat courtesy of John Frendo’s strike.

“We didn’t train last Thursday – we had a meeting with myself, Tom (Jones) and the players,” said the Hardenhuish Park chief, whose side’s trip to leaders Hemel Hempstead Town on Saturday was rained off.

“We talked about where we wanted to go and the hope that everyone was on board. Obviously, Saturday’s game was off so we all got together and watched Chippenham Park play.

“We wanted to make sure we are a team and we’re sticking together. We felt that the performance at Bashley wasn’t good enough and we wanted to speak about it. We didn’t want to go straight on the training ground and forget about it.

“Myself and Tom have got responsibilities to the chairman and they’ve got responsibilities to myself and Tom, and the football club. I think you could see (against St Albans) that there’s a togetherness about the team and hopefully we’re moving in the right direction.”

Collier, pictured, added: “To be perfectly honest, I thought we were excellent (on Monday night), and we had a disappointed dressing room because I thought we deserved to get something from the game.

“We’ve come to a team that are 30-odd points clear of us and given a very good account of ourselves and I said to the players that if they play like that for the rest of the season then there’s only one place where we’re going to go and that’s up the table.

“But we need to make sure that we continue to play with that kind of application. I want the players to be disappointed, but not down, because the performance level was pretty good.”

Chippenham have a chance to right the wrongs from their 3-1 loss at Bashley when the New Forest strugglers visit this weekend.

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