WITHOUT even thinking about, the fixture list often throws up an ironic game or two during the season and Saturday’s trip to Boston was one of those. Nicknamed the Pilgrims in honour of those who sailed on the Mayflower nearly 400 years ago searching for the Promised Land, we found ourselves heading to Lincolnshire also looking for something a bit better.

What we found beyond dykes and a windmill was a better attitude and more effort from those lining up for us. With Martin Gray starting to empathise with Old Mother Hubbard, while the starting line-up saw most players operating in their preferred positions, it still felt like it was probably not the first choice side that the gaffer would have liked to field. Players such as Stephen Thompson and James Caton, who look desperate to find some form, would surely not have played if others had been available but that’s the necessity of paucity at this time.

While effort was up – it was hard to be any less than against South Shields a week earlier – there was still a lack of real quality to our play. As pleased as Martin Gray was to come away with a point, it’s probably worth highlighting that Boston United are not a good side. Worryingly, we’ve played quite a few poor teams recently that we would have swept aside with relative ease last season but have huffed and puffed against this. Boston certainly had control of the middle of the park but had very little quality to test our defence. Sadly, we looked just as blunt up front. While some fans see Mark Beck as the root cause of our more direct style of football and apportion blame accordingly, his absence was notable and we certainly lacked some physical presence up front. Remarkably, despite a front line of Nathan Cartman and Caton, we still played pretty direct for periods of the game much to the delight of the sizable Boston centre halves.

Having looked unlikely to breakdown the home defence, it was great credit to Harvey Saunders that he chased down a nothing ball and forced the defender to make a silly challenge. His energy and work ethic really are undisputable. It was a gift of an opportunity well taken by Thompson that threatened to get us right back on track. As it was, yet more schoolboy defending cost us once again. The less said about their goal, the better. It was a real shame that having been gifted a goal that wasn’t going to come otherwise; we couldn’t have hung on for the three points even if we probably hadn’t done enough to deserve them.

As has been the case a few too many times than I’d like this season, Adam Bartlett was our star man. Over the years, we’ve got used to goalkeepers being our star players for a good reason – we’ve been a bit rubbish. However, this is the first time under Martin Gray’s leadership that we’ve been so reliant on the guy between the sticks. Hopefully, when the injuries ease off and the manager’s work on the training ground starts to pay off, we might be able to let Bartlett have an easier game or two. In the meantime, let’s hope he keeps up his top form.