SHOLING travel to Hampshire rivals Fleet Town tomorrow looking to bounce back from a 5-2 midweek blip at Swindon Supermarine.

But though the result looked bad on paper, the reality was that for the first 45 minutes the Boatmen played some of their best football since Dave Diaper’s return to the helm.

“We were tremendous first half and we didn’t want half-time to come” said Diaper, whose side led 2-1 at the break through Nick Watts and Byron Mason.

“The problem was that we had a 16-year-old Jordan Brookes in goal who had been playing really well, but I think half-time broke his concentration and he let a bad goal in at his near post right at the start of the second half.

“Sam Olaofe then went off injured and it went progressively downhill from there.

“We had Jack Smith shown a straight red for a tackle that was never a sending-off and defender Dan Miller, who’s just back from a foot injury, was struggling to kick the ball and had to come off.

“There are always reasons behind results like that.

“In the first half we looked a complete unit and young Jordan was tremendous in goal, his handling was really good.

“Breaking for half-time mucked it up for him, but he showed great promise and I said to him after the game that I wouldn’t have any qualms about him starting another game.

“It was a freak second half really, but the important thing was that we didn’t give up.

“When your self-belief gets knocked like that, it’s interesting to see what the reaction is and ours was good. It would have been easy to capitulate going down to ten men.”

Brookes was called into action because Rory Anderson, who had been covering for Matt Brown (broken finger) and Lee Webber (cut leg), was himself injured against Bishops Cleeve last Saturday in a knee-to-knee collision with defender TJ Cuthbertson, who was crocked for Tuesday.

“You’d think if you signed three ’keepers you’d have one of them fit!” sighed Diaper.

“Hopefully we’ll have TJ back at Fleet tomorrow and I’m waiting to hear how Rory is.

“Sam Olaofe’s got a hamstring problem, Nick Watts came off with something similar and Dan Miller’s having an X-ray on his foot.”