DORCHESTER Town manager Craig Laird has described last night’s display as a “die-hard” team performance.

The comments came after the Magpies fought for a 1-0 victory over title contenders Hitchin Town, a result which sees them strengthen their position in the Evo-Stik Southern Premier Division’s relegation battle.

By his own admission it wasn’t pretty to watch, but the boss was delighted at the way his players carried out their individual and collective roles.

He said: “The players were brilliant, we rode our luck at times but we were absolutely brilliant.

“We try to set our tactics out and ask our players to employ them in order to exploit weaknesses in the opposition, and on Saturday we didn’t do that.

“But our shape was better, our players focused on what was expected of them and they carried out the jobs asked of them, and that allowed us to carry on with our game plan.”

The victory sees the Magpies record their second win in three games, and Laird has said the focus now has to be on building momentum by going on a good run of form.

“Like I said last week, that victory is only worth something if we can follow it up with a good performance on Saturday. If we do that then we can secure our place in this division.

“But we need to start runs, we need to go into Saturday with the same determination and focus and hopefully we can carry out the tactics we want to display.”

The manager also made a number of changes to his team, and emphasised the need for a competitive squad to be successful.

“We made a couple of changes to freshen things up. In my opinion you need 16 or 17 players to compete at this level.

“We freshened up the team from Saturday, Ollie Davis had his debut and he took his opportunity and worked hard. All the lads played really well and did their job, and if we have enough players doing that on a regular basis then we have a chance of doing well.”