AROUND the turn of the year, Chippenham Town drew six matches inside a five-week period, but manager Mark Collier believes that any regret over those results has been washed away.

The Chippenham manager’s renewed optimism comes after seeing his side win 1-0 at promotion rivals Slough Town on Saturday and move into second in the Southern League Premier Division table, stretching their unbeaten run to 10 games with a third victory on the trot.

The Bluebirds’ assignment survived the cold snap by virtue of the artificial surface at Slough’s Arbour Park and Andy Sandell fired home at the far post in the second half to grab the only goal of the game, the striker meeting Will Richards’ flick-on from a Matt Jones corner to score.

Chippenham are now a point behind leaders Leamington – albeit having played a game more – and Collier now feels he has no right to turn his nose up at draws against the likes of Cirencester Town and Biggleswade Town in recent weeks.

“Those draws against maybe teams that are not in the top five or six become big points when you’re taking points off your rivals at the top of the league,” said the Bluebirds boss.

“We’re moving in the right direction and the momentum is with us at this moment in time, so we need to keep our foot on the pedal and keep pushing now.

“To go to one of your rivals, one of the favourites for the league in pre-season, and to come away with a clean sheet and three points; it was almost a perfect away performance from us.

“We’re in a good place at the moment.

“We’ve got a great team spirit, the camaraderie with the lads is great – the lads that came off the bench worked their socks off and did a job for the team – and I said to everybody that this unbeaten run has come from hard work and application.

“We’re in a good position at the moment and we’ve got 16 games to go, and they’re all going to be cup finals but if we can perform like we did today, then we’re certainly going to win more games than we lose.”

Collier also thought his troops were well worth all three points at Slough.

He said: “They started off particularly brightly, as you’d expect.

“There was a big crowd there and we came under a bit of pressure but we defended well and got people behind the ball to try and play on the counter if we could.

“We went in at 0-0 at half-time and we always say that the game changes and opens up after that.

“We scored from a decent corner routine and for the rest of the game, they tried to have a right go at us but our ball-retention was good, our work-rate without the ball was outstanding and we continued to create chances ourselves on the counter.

“We could have certainly sneaked a couple towards the end but saying that, we’ve had to defend in numbers for a little while and Darren Chitty’s pulled off a couple of decent saves and we’ve made some manful blocks in and around the area, so it was as good a performance away from home as we’ve had for some time.”