Tom talks - after the Barwell game

On Saturday Blyth's fixture was at Barwell, which is located just on the edge of Bosworth Field where King Richard the Third was killed in 1485.

It was a story of human tragedy; slaughter on a massive scale as limbs were hacked off and bodies trampled under-foot. The Battle that is - not the Evo-Stik game which, in contrast, only witnessed a bleeding nose suffered by Barwell's Richard Lavery and a couple of tweaked hamstrings.

Spartans manager Tom Wade was delighted with the outcome of the encounter.

"It was three great points gained in a 2-1 victory. One point for us would have been good as Barwell have been on a fine run but I always thought we had a chance to win," he said.

"I know we are now in third place in the league table but others below us have games in hand. Having said that they are unlikely to win all those games. However I think we are punching above our weight a little at the moment but when we have everyone fit again, plus if we can strengthen in a couple of positions, I think we can really push on in the second half of the season.

"At the weekend after four and a half hours on the coach and three recent intense games we were a bit slow out of the blocks and missed two good chances early on. You really need to take those especially away from home and it can lead to confidence dipping but we carried on and although they had our backs up against the wall a little we only went in at the interval one down.

"We then dominated the second half by playing a bit higher up the pitch. It was great to see because Lewis Horner, Arran Wearmouth and Matty Wade weren't fully fit. But 'needs must' and we grafted well to create to chances for Nipa [Daniel Maguire] and Nathan [Buddle] to score.

"Our fitness levels are brilliant and we didn't run out of legs, whereas Barwell died a death."

Not literally of course. It wasn't that kind of battle.