UP until Christmas I was wondering if we would go through the season without meeting a truly formidable side in League Two.

Big mistake!

Along came Exeter away, Portsmouth at home, and Notts County away; three sides who have each, in their own way, beaten our injury-struck squad and shown that League Two is not the football backwater that I had feared.

Over the course of the season, those three opponents have all been madly inconsistent, and we had the misfortune to meet each of them on one of their best days.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Notts County were a good footballing side when we met them last Saturday.

They were not.

They were direct, basic, unrefined and unattractive.

But they got the job done, winning the three points 3-1, and sending their fans home ecstatic, marvelling at the performance of Shola Ameobi.

Other than in matters of style, the difference between us and Notts was that they had a front pairing of Ameobi and Jon Stead, whose movement, touch, physicality, retention/protection of the ball and finishing all showed their Premier League pedigree.

We tried to approach the game progressively, and after an hour of being pushed back we tried to open up by changing a 5-3-2 / 3-5-2 formation to 4-1-3-2, but it made no difference.

Our final throw was to take Tom Lapslie off, make Sean Murray the deepest midfield player and introduce Tarique Fosu to attack from midfield.

Like everything else we tried on the day, it made precious little impression.

It felt like we didn’t have enough gas left in the tank.

If we had been able to field Ameobi and Stead up front instead of Porter and Pyke, we would have won at a canter.

The Notts front two were that influential and inspiring, playing off each other, loving the lower league adulation in the twilight of their careers.

They could do no wrong as they enjoyed themselves like a couple of teenagers.

Expert goal-scoring forwards make average sides good, and good sides great; such was the value of Ameobi and Stead.

By comparison, Porter and Pyke were on a hiding to nothing.

New Notts County owner Alan Hardy is throwing money at their playing budget, increasing it further next season according to the Nottingham Post.

Hardy has a journey ahead of him, and he will make it without those two ageing former Premier League stars rolling back the years every week and maybe even without current manager Kevin Nolan, whose style will surely jar after a while.

But every dog has its day and his was on Saturday.

Thankfully, Notts didn’t score the five or six goals that they could have.

We escaped quite lightly and know that the final score could have been much worse.

It was a long journey home for the 420 U’s fans and the promotion chase now feels over, with six fixtures to complete.

The attractiveness of our remaining home games, against Stevenage, Plymouth and Doncaster will keep interest high, before we bring the curtain down against Yeovil on May 6.

Away from home, Morecambe await us on Easter Monday, before we complete our travels at Orient in our penultimate fixture which feels like a three-point ‘gimme’ in the bag, provided the game starts and finishes, both of which must be in doubt because of Orient’s ruination.

It will be Orient’s last EFL game at Brisbane Road for a while at least, and it could even be their last ever game as Leyton Orient FC.

How unimaginably hard it will be for their supporters.

If our season has been tough, theirs has been a hundred times worse.

The next six games will be a long goodbye after a season in which everyone on the playing side at the club must feel that they have been tested to the limit and we have had to dig so deep.

Managing Colchester United has never been easy, and this season has been harder than most, but John McGreal and his team have weathered the storm.