Strong end to Nailers season

Saturday’s 3-3 home draw with Chasetown brought down the curtain on the Evo-Stik NPL campaign with a 10th place finish.

Skipper Eric Graves (pictured) said the club had achieved the minimum goals set pre-season, but felt they could have done even better.

“Obviously we’d have liked to have finished higher as always but you always like to make progression from the previous year and finish in a higher position, which we have done,” he said.

“I am an ambitious person so I do feel a tinge of disappointment as I don’t think there were too many really good teams in this league this year. I think we could have finished higher.

“But, essentially we were on track. We wanted a top 10 finish and we got it. Next stop is a top five finish.”

He added: “We finished the season with three wins a draw so 10 out of 12 points is a nice way to finish and everyone goes into the summer with a smile on their face.

“We’ve got a good formation that seems to be working for us.

“Hopefully everyone will be back for pre-season and with a couple of quality additions the manager will make I hope we can be challenging with a really strong squad going into next year.”

Graves was delighted fans went into the summer enjoying the side’s final game as they showed they do know where the net is.

“The defending went out the window for a bit but we did score a few goals,” he smiled.

“We dominated the game to be honest but just made some silly mistakes in defence, especially at the start of the second half when we suddenly found ourselves 3-1 behind out of nowhere really.

“But we were still confident we could get back in the game and managed to get two goals back

“We pulled one with 20 minutes to go and were really pushing. I think we should have had a penalty to be fair.

“But then we equalised with probably the last kick of the game which always feel like a win. It was a nice way to end the season like that.

“Obviously there was nothing too important riding on the game overall as it was the end of the season.

“One of our issues this season has been scoring goals. So it was nice to finish off with three. In the last few games we’ve scored a few goals so it was nice to end the season on a positive note.”

He ended: “I was speaking to some fans in the bar afterwards and they were saying early on in the season when we went a goal or two down they were conscious we probably wouldn’t get back in as we were not scoring enough. But we have managed to address that.

“I think the season has been on a par with what the chairman and the manager expected.”

Credit: Belper News