HONEST Tom Broadbent rightly took great confidence from his performance against Crewe Alexandra on Saturday, and opened up more about how he has successfully battled a slight confidence knock from earlier in the season.

Broadbent made his first League Two start of the season at the weekend as Town registered a timely 3-1 win over Crewe at the County Ground. The 27-year-old performed admirably for the second week running after he came on as an emergency substitute in the first half of last Saturday’s visit of Bradford City.

Though key centre halves Dion Conroy, Mathieu Baudry and Zeki Fryers are out injured, Broadbent’s start against Crewe was perhaps justified by his performance from the previous week.

In an interview with the Adver last year, Broadbent admitted confidence issues hurt his progress as an aspiring youth team player – which prompted him to join the army.

But he has adopted a fresh mental approach to his profession – one key element being avoiding comments both good and bad on social media.

“Everyone has bad games, but no one becomes a bad player overnight,” said Broadbent.

“There are different things going on, and you have to get your own head right. It’s tough when you see things on Twitter, you’ve got to block it out.

“I’ve worked a lot of mentality and things like that, and I feel good now. You have to be strong mentally.

“I don’t look at comments anymore, I have a totally different mentality. I came into the professional game late and I had never experienced a bad run of form or lack of confidence.

“Saturday shows I have done well to get over that and get back in. The fans have been brilliant, and they were excellent at the weekend.”

Broadbent also sung the praises of Town manager Richie Wellens after the final whistle.

Wellens opened up about his squad’s disastrous pre-match training session on Friday – and how he consequently opted to totally change his XI’s tactical approach to the game just two hours before kick-off.

Broadbent himself felt as though change was required after Friday’s session, and believed the 39-year-old’s makeshift plan worked to perfection.

He added: “Just because we changed at the last minute doesn’t mean it changes how they (Crewe) set up.

“It worked, and in my head I thought it was going to be better. I was happy with the change.

“I sensed it was a bad session on Friday. We worked on the shape and we kept giving the ball away, it didn’t have that good feel to it.

“I’m glad Richie (Wellens) changed it to be honest. His move was for the better, we won the game.

“If we did set up how we originally planned, it could’ve been a different outcome.”