​Attenborough proud of Nailers after victory

​A 3G pitch combined with a partisan crowd and unpleasant weather made for a difficult cocktail awaiting the Nailers but they passed another tough test at the Belle View Stadium.

The winner came on 72 minutes, when Currtis Burrows had an effort which was blocked nearly on the line but Kevin Bastos followed up to move to 18 goals for the season.

Attenborough told Radio Belper Town: “I’m absolutely chuffed to bits, I’m proud of the lads and a real team performance against 13 or 14 men really. I have to be honest, and it’s easy to say when you lose, but I thought the officials today were a disgrace.

“We had two stonewall penalties [denied[ and he’s booked our lad for diving and everything seemed to go against us, and we’ve ground out a really hard-fought win with three clean sheets on the spin.

“The first ten minutes we started well, and we had a big let off when they hit the post and should have scored, but we grew into the game and improved a little bit and we had a 10-15 minute spell just before half time, but it wasn’t great today.

“Our quality wasn’t great today. The pitch doesn’t help you and you’re over hitting balls that you don’t usually overhit and it skids out, but you have to deal with the cards you’re dealt, and what we are doing at the minute is staying in games aren’t we?

“Again, we weren’t vintage, but no-one can question the desire, guts, and determination that the players have got. You’ve got to take points off the likes of North Ferriby, Carlton and Consett as they are all around the play-offs and if you want to be at the right end of the table you’ve got to do that.

“In this league I don’t look at any fixtures being easy fixtures. These games are just as tough as the Brighouses who turned us over at our place as we know, so we’ve just got to take a game at a time and prepare properly for it.

“The lads were running on empty there and it’s been the same team definitely two games running if not three so there’s some tired legs, but at the minute you can’t leave those lads out the way they’re playing.”