BOSS Mark Jermyn admitted after the Magpies’ win over Histon on Saturday that it would be disappointing if his side did not now finish the campaign in a mid-table position.

Dorchester’s victory was their sixth in nine matches and the three points saw them climb to 16th place in the Evo-Stik Southern Premier Division standings.

The hosts’ performance, which saw them keep just their fifth clean sheet in the league this season, pleased player-manager Jermyn.

And he believes he has the personnel in his squad to take the Magpies even further up the table.

“If we don’t finish in mid-table with this group of players, which I feel is achievable, I think it would be a little bit of a disappointment," he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t got the biggest squad in the world or the resources, but I think with the players we have we can finish in mid-table.

“That’s where we are focusing on and I look back at the Bideford game and it really riles me that they beat us.

“That was the one of the three that we have lost that we shouldn’t have lost, the other two were against sides higher in the league.

“However, even in those games we hit the post and had a penalty disallowed in the last couple of minutes.

“I said to the players before the game on Saturday that we’ve got to take those little bits from the games we’ve lost which are going to take us forward as a group.”

He continued: “I’m hoping the win against Histon is going to lift us and we can go into next weekend’s game looking to get back to the performance levels of the games at Hungerford and Truro.

“As a team, they should be thinking they are up there with the better sides in the league, and I believe that as well.”

Histon went into Saturday’s clash with only one away league win to their names all season, but that didn’t mean Jermyn and Dorchester were going to take anything for granted.

“We never go into games thinking that we’re any better than the other team,” added Jermyn.

“We give them the respect they deserve as they had drawn three out of their last six.

“I know they haven’t been very good away from home so that’s why we started at quite a quick tempo.

“We did die off a bit in the last 10 minutes of the first half and it did shake us a bit when the ball went across the face of our goal.

“For whatever reason that rattled us but the players gave a good reaction.

“Don’t take anything away from Histon, they came to give us a game and didn’t roll over.

“They took the game to us as well in the second half and changed their shape, so that’s when we had to go 4-4-2.

“That nullified them and we were able to break, and then we got the second goal.”