MANAGER Carl Heeley sung the praises of “outstanding” centre-back duo Sam Oji and Graham Hutchison after Worcester City battled out a 0-0 draw against Boston United.

Oji, who was given the nod ahead of Tom Sharpe, and Hutchison had a busy afternoon at the Jakemans Stadium on Saturday.

But they were equal to whatever Boston could throw at them as City bounced back from their defeats to Nuneaton Town and Brackley Town with a hard-earned Vanarama National League North point.

“We have conceded six sloppy goals in the last two games which has been disappointing,” said Heeley, whose side secured three successive clean sheets last month.

“So we needed to correct that and get back to keeping clean sheets and being difficult to beat.

“I thought Sam and Hutch (Hutchison) were outstanding alongside Gally (Andy Gallinagh) and Tyler (Weir) as they really protected Booty (Ryan Boot) well as he didn’t have much to do.”

Boston skipper Liam Agnew had a goal chalked off for offside in the first half while Jay Rollins missed a great chance after a mistake by Hutchison.

But Worcester held firm, with Oji, who was making his first start since mid-September, putting in a number of important tackles.

“The reason for putting Sam in was because Tom works as an accountant and it has been his month-end (close),” Heeley continued.

“He’s been unable to go to training this week where the boys have been in and working on our shape.

“Unfortunately Sharpey has missed out, but Sam has come in and done a great job.”

Lee Hughes twice came close to scoring for City in an end-to-end opening period before Boston upped the ante after the break.

“I thought Boston came into it more in the second half, but our opportunity to win the game was certainly in the first half,” Heeley said.

“We had five or six reasonably good chances and probably should have taken at least one of them.

“Overall, we worked hard, we kept our shape and we didn’t concede, so it is a positive.

“Boston is a tough, old place to come and our record here hasn’t been great, so we will take the point.”

Worcester were without Cieron Keane (head), Colby Bishop (hip), Steven Craig (Achilles), Connor Gater (toe) and James Chambers (hamstring) through injury, while Heeley handed a debut to new signing Micah Evans.

He added: “You could see there was very little between the two teams.

“Boston have got some players missing and so have we and both teams struggled with not having a cutting edge in the last third.

“Points are tough to come by in this league, which is the toughest I have known it to be.

“Yes, we could possibly be a bit picky as we probably should have done better in the last third.

“But we could have got beat and we haven’t so we will take that hard-earned point as it’s something to build on next week.”