THE Dover defeat was an undeniable blow to our title challenge.

At the end of the match the disappointment was there for all to see -- but I am not going to criticise the players.

We didn't play well and I wouldn't try to kid anybody otherwise, but I get a bit annoyed when you get a few shouts about the players not trying hard enough.

You hear these comments but the one thing this lot don't do is throw in the towel as they have demonstrated on numerous occasions this season.

We've had poor spells and struggled at times but one charge you cannot level at them is that they don't try.

Saturday's result cost us a large part of the advantage which we gained from our victory at Tamworth and when you lose games like that you reflect on the drawn games, such as Hinckley and Ilkeston, and they start to look more expensive. We have had too many draws to be honest.

I don't know what points total is going to win this championship but I would imagine we need to be averaging at least two points from every game for the rest of the season.

Dover were not a bad side by any stretch of the imagination with plenty of experience and organisation. As I've mentioned before I have been surprised that more people are not talking about them as creditable challengers.

There has been a lot of talk about us, Tamworth, Chippenham, Tiverton and Stafford but in this neck of the woods not too much about Dover. That will have changed after the weekend.

At half-time I think they would have been happy with a point which they had set their stall out for as they showed by their tactic of hitting early balls to a quick and willing runner up front.

From our point of view I think a draw was the best we could have got from the match. Their goal was hard luck on our goalkeeper Danny McDonnell who had performed heroics to keep out the first two efforts and deserved to get away with it.

The blunt truth is that our squad is too thin on the ground. I would have liked to have made three changes for the Dover game. Unfortunately we were not able to do that and typically we had to wait until two o'clock to know whether Adam Webster was going to be fit with his tight hamstring.

He felt OK but with other options I would not have played him.

Two of the players on the bench couldn't have featured -- Mark Shail was still not fit and Richard Tomkins had a calf strain.

Everybody knows we need reinforcements and we have been working twice as hard in recent weeks to make that happen, but it is not like going down to the supermarket just seeing what you want and buying it. Football does not work like that and you can spend weeks or even months on transfers.

Saturday takes us to Moor Green who are slowly piecing together their season after a disappointing start. Whenever you go there you have to earn whatever you get and we are fully prepared for that.