Paul Lines says Nostell’s season is far from over
Paul Lines is urging his Nostell Miners Welfare players to not assume that the season is over now that their survival has been all but ensured.
Lines wants his side to show what they can do in the last few weeks of the Toolstation NCEL Premier Division as he starts preparing for the Sheffield & Hallamshire Senior Cup Final next month.
Nostell can mathematically secure their Premier Division status at doomed Glasshoughton Welfare tomorrow night.
Nostell reached the golden 30 points mark with the 2-0 win over Retford United and only a Glasshoughton win and a chain of highly unlikely results would plunge the Crofton-based side back into relegation zone.
“I think we should be safe now, although I still want to go to Glasshoughton and get three points there,” Lines told Non League Yorkshire.
“Retford was a game that we targeted and as is Glasshoughton, but ultimately we got there on Thursday night – the 30 points I was looking for.
“There’s teams chasing us now, but going into tomorrow night, it is in our hands again.
“It should be an impossible task for Glasshoughton and Retford to catch us and all we need to do is keep going.
“I said to the lads on Thursday night that they’re playing for their places in the final. They have to have the appeitite and the legs and they have to show me what they have got.
“It is not going to be a stroll in the park for them before the final. We can’t slacken off.
“It is not job done as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to stop and say ‘we’ve got 30 points and we’re safe’.”
The trip to Leeds Road is a potential banana-skin for Nostell.
Glasshoughton have only won three league games all season, whilst also receiving several double-figures hammerings. Welfare have also fielded just ten players on at least two occasions.
But, Nostell and Lines are taking nothing for granted.
He said: “It is how you approach these game as there was a little nervousness on Thursday night.
“I said to them ‘go and play like you have been doing in the last two months, whether it is Shaw Lane, Worksop’.
“They have to go with that attitude tomorrow.
“Anybody is vary of a banana-skin, but everybody should be a bit more relaxed now we have got to 30 points so we should go and express ourselves and play our brand of football.”
That brand of football has earned them seven wins in the past 12 league games which taken them from bottom of the Division to fourth-bottom.
Over 200 people watched Nostell beat Retford on Thursday night as part of the NCEL Easter GroundHop weekend.
Lines believed that the win could have been a lot easier.
“It should have been put to bed in the first half,” he added.
“We had two really good chances with Dale Kelly missing a header and Jack Fisher missing one.
“Rob (Bordman) missed a few and so did Steve Wales. Utimately we could have gone three or four up at half-time.
“As for the second half, we never really came out. We had a couple of decent chances, but they had the clear-cut chances and they didn’t take them.
“We were hanging on and it wasn’t like us. I think Retford deserved a point in that second half. They definitely deserved a goal.”
Adam Clayton is suspended, while David Bordman is still injured.