FC Halifax Town: “We haven’t worked for 10 months to throw it away at the end” says Wild as Hyde and Allen look poised to return

The duo missed the 3-0 defeat at Dagenham and Redbridge last Saturday with a sore knee and a sore shoulder respectively.

Their return may be offset by injury problems elsewhere in Pete Wild’s squad though.

“We’re hoping Hyde’s going to train on Thursday. He did his running on Tuesday and passed all his markers,” Wild said.

“So we’re hoping he’ll train on Thursday, along with Allen.

“But we’ve picked up two or three knocks against Dagenham, and we’re assessing those.

“Fair play to the lads, they’re rolling themselves out when they’ve got knocks and bumps, carrying on when they’re injured, so fair play to them.

“We’ve got to try and look after the group as best we can.”

Wild says The Shaymen still believe they can finish in the play-offs.

Halifax are 10th in the table, one point off seventh, but Eastleigh, who are level on points with Town, have a game in hand.

The Shaymen realistically need to win both games to have a chance, and will be relying on sides above them to drop points.

Wild’s men have lost back-to-back games against Boreham Wood and Dagenham and Redbridge, and visit Maidenhead on Saturday.

“Of course we can, we can still do it,” Wild said.

“We’ll have to work hard to get results, but we certainly can and we still believe we can.

“We’ve sat down and had a chat as a group and we firmly believe we can do it.

“We’ve had another excellent season and we want to finish off in style. We haven’t worked for 10 months to throw it away at the end, so we firmly think we can do it.”

When asked what his side need to do better against Maidenhead, the Town manager said: “Play for longer. Watching the (Dagenham) video back, we were brilliant for the first 25 minutes, we played really well.

“But we need to do that for sustained periods of time, we need to take our chances when they come.

“Looking back at the (Dagenham) game, they’ve only opened us up twice in general play, and two of their goals have come from set-pieces, one on the counter, so we need to defend against set-pieces better and make sure they can’t drive through us.

“So there’s bits. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but we certainly need to play better for longer.”

The Shaymen have won four and lost four of their last eight games, seeing them drop out of the top seven from a position where a play-off place looked on the cards, to it now hanging in the balance.

“It’s frustrating for us all, we’re all desperate to do well,” Wild said. “If we’d had that consistency we’d have been home and hosed by now, but the truth of the matter is we’re not.

“Like I said on Saturday, when you’re down four players and we’ve got players on the pitch carrying injuries that are just trying to get through the game, that’s unfortunately where we are as a football club because of the strength-in-depth that we have within the squad.”

Maidenhead drew 0-0 at Yeovil on Tuesday night, leaving them 14th in the table after one win in their last seven matches.

“They’ve had a really good season, very strong, physical, excellent on set-pieces,” Wild said.

“We’re certainly going to have to match them physically, and what was our undoing in the reverse fixture was set-pieces, so we’re going to have to make sure we defend set-pieces well.”