I was delighted with the result on Saturday when we had to battle our way to victory against a determined Crawley side who we've struggled against in our previous meetings.

I've said before that each match at this level is a battle because you have to win the right to play your football, and that's just what we did at the weekend.

We weren't at our best in the first-half; we were second to too many balls and we had a few scary moments in and around our box where we couldn't clear the ball. Even allowing for that, Sam Russell still had a relatively quite afternoon between the posts.

At half-time I let the players know in no uncertain terms what I thought and I got exactly the response I wanted after the interval; we upped our game and could easily have won by more than the two goals we scored.

Full credit to Crawley's keeper, Simon Rayner, because he made at least five excellent saves to keep us at bay and for a while I thought it was going to be one of those days.

But then we got the break through with Matty Wolfenden doing very well to set up Mike Williams who registered his fourth goal of the campaign with a controlled low shot at the far post.

The goal clearly lifted the players and then we started to pass the ball around far better, our movement was quicker and the second goal from Matty was just reward.

He's had a difficult time with injury since joining us but has been looking very sharp for the last fortnight and I had a little feeling he might score.

As for Mike Williams, for a defender, he clearly has an eye for goal and he's a player we can push up front if needed because his physical presence can help keep the ball alive in the box, especially when teams tend to sit back against us.

It was a great three points however and made up, in part, for the disappointing of drawing at home to Tamworth.

Other positives were Gareth Taylor getting a decent run out towards the end and the overall performances of Christian Smith and Luke Holden.

Like the team, Christian started slowly and you could see that he hadn't played for a while.

Then when he found his feet, he started to dominate the midfield and win the 50-50 challenges thus providing the opportunity for Flemmo to stroke the ball around.

I also thought Luke was magnificent in the second-half and as the game went on he was shouting at me 'I'm knackered'.But he kept going and on another day could probably have had a hat-trick.

Moving on to tonight's clash with Stevenage, we know it's going to be another tough game because they are a big, strong team - probably the biggest team since the Chicago Bulls to go on a football pitch!

When we played them down at Broadhall Way back in November, I can remember saying to Brian Carey that the subs they were bringing on were getting bigger and bigger, so we'll have to stand up to that aerial threat.

They're also an accomplished footballing side who can pass the ball well and attack with pace but, as we've shown since the turn of the year, we seem to save our best performances for matches against the better teams.

We'll certainly need a good performance tonight to claim the three points and, whilst a number of the players are carrying various bumps and bruises at the moment, I'm confident that we can maintain our improved form of late here at The Racecourse.

Enjoy the game.

Dean