Millington ready for important matches

Boss Chris Millington is fairly relaxed about Halifax Town’s mammoth end to the season and insisted it doesn’t make a play-off place any less achievable, writes Tom Scargill.

Saturday's 2-0 defeat to Barnet saw Town kick off a run of four games in eight days to end the season, with their home game against Ebbsfleet on Tuesday also played at Accrington Stanley’s Wham Stadium and their match against Oldham at Chesterfield's ground on Thursday before a visit to Eastleigh on the final day on Saturday.

"In some ways it eases off because we aren't going to be training, we'll have basic match-prep sessions, there won't be a whole lot to plan for in terms of training sessions because they'll be very, very low intensity," Millington said.

"We've got a lot of the opposition analysis done for Ebbsfleet and Oldham because we prepared a lot of work in preparation for the first games, so the pressure is eased a bit in that sense.

"It's not unusual for us to play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday so to add one more game into that is not ideal but it's certainly not going to make the end goal any less achievable."

At the time of going to print, Town’s top seven hopes were still in their own hands, with seventh place their most likely destination. That would mean a play-off eliminator game on Wednesday, April 24 at the team who end up in fourth, which was likely to be Altrincham.

Millington identified lapses in concentration that proved costly in their defeat to Barnet, saying: "I think we were the better team but Barnet deserved the three points because Barnet did what we couldn't, which is put the ball in the back of the net.

"We started too slow on the setpieces and we switched off.

"We knew our jobs. The first one, the long throw, we knew they look for the flick on and have two, maybe three, men attacking the back stick.

"People had jobs and their lad ran off our lad and it gets put in the back of the net, from a player switching off.

"Similarly, on the corner, we've got a set-up, we've got a plan, we've got people with specific jobs and somebody hasn't done their job.