Blyth Spartans manager Michael Nelson wants his players to relish the opportunity of playing during the national lockdown ahead of Saturday’s clash with Curzon Ashton.
Spartans’ elite state enables the club to fulfil its National League North fixtures as normal, while teams below Step 2 are forced into a four-week break.
However, the continuation of football does bring its own challenges with Blyth scheduled to play SEVEN matches between now and December 1.
That said, Nelson is keen for his players to enjoy the opportunity of fulfilling their matches during the lockdown as he previews this weekend’s encounter with Curzon.
Nelson said: “We could all be sitting at home not being able to play or train, so I think the players have to grasp that and enjoy being able to get out of the house.
“We need to enjoy it because others can’t. It’s a good position to be in that we can play, so we’ve got to relish it.”
He added: “We will take everything game by game.
“You obviously look at teams who were in-and-around you the season before and think you might have a better opportunity – but it doesn’t always work like that.
“It’s just whoever plays better on the day, so we have to take it one game at a time.
“We can’t pin our hopes on picking out fixtures where you go: ‘Ah, we’ll take three points there, a draw here’.
“You don’t know what to expect from clubs at this stage of the season, Curzon have brought in some good players over the summer.
“We’ve watched them in recent games and they look strong, but we go into every game hoping to break teams down and get a positive result.
“That won’t change going into this game.”
Spartans travel to the Tameside Stadium on the back of a 2-0 defeat at Kidderminster Harriers.
And Nelson hopes to see an improvement on the attacking front having also drawn a blank in their previous home game against Southport.
“We got in some good areas against Kidderminster but we never really pulled the trigger enough,” Nelson admitted.
“When we get into those good areas – a shooting position or in the wide area down the side of the box – we need to start delivering in order to hurt teams.
“It’s something we’ve worked on this week – hopefully we’ll see more signs of improvement on Saturday.”