DORCHESTER boss Mark Morris aims to rekindle his side's promotion dreams by telling them to forget about going up.

He says the fear of failure as they chase a top two finish in the Dr Martens Eastern Division for a second successive season has stopped his players enjoying their football.

And he believes it was the pressure of maintaining a long unbeaten run that was at the root of the sudden slump which saw them go from promotion favourites to promotion outsiders in just three games.

"Sometimes the quest for promotion becomes the over-riding factor and becomes a frightening factor," said Morris ahead of tomorrow's visit to King's Lynn- another team on the fringe of the promotion race.

"If you lose a game everyone tries a little bit too hard, sometimes you have to relax to play football and that is what I want my players to do. If we are going up, we will go up because we are playing football the right way. If it is not meant to be then we will have to give it another go next season. We will hold our hands up and say we gave it our best shot with the players we have.

"That's not something I, the players or the chairman wants to do. But the pressure of keeping our unbeaten run going was getting to us.

"I just want us to perform and if at the end of the season we have done that and we still weren't good enough then so be it.

"We have been under pressure since our first game, worrying about what happens if we lose and Salisbury, Bashley or some other team wins or loses and in the end the fear factor stops you enjoying what you are doing. Pressure kills you and good players become average ones because of it.

"My players looked as though they had stopped enjoying themselves towards the end of our 18 game unbeaten run when we became more and more nervy. But I don't want them to bother about that anymore, let's take a bit of pressure off ourselves because it has been too intense over the past few weeks."

Morris said there were signs that his men were starting to enjoy themselves again in Tuesday night's 7-0 demolition of Hamworthy United in the Dorset Senior Cup.

"We played the sort of football that took us up the league table and although King's Lynn will be tougher, if we keep playing that kind of passing game we can beat anyone.

"Let's go to King's Lynn determined to put the fun back into our play and if we start doing that and sneak ourselves back in with a chance of going up then so be it."

Tuesday's absentees, skipper Andy Harris (suspension) and Matt Hann (stomach bug) return to the Magpies squad to face the former Premier League side.