WHILE he admitted it wasn't his team's greatest display of the season, Witham Town manager Mark Ashford was still pleased with a 2-1 victory against Great Wakering Rovers that he felt could be a "stepping stone" for his side.

Witham came into the game on the back of a run of four games where they had taken just a solitary Bostik League division north point and three back-to-back defeats, so the three points - that lifted them up to 15th in the table - were very welcome.

Goals from Kevin Coyle and Johnny Ashman were memorable moments in an otherwise under par performance but Ashford was happy to see his players show they were capable of battling out a win despite not being at their best.

“I suppose the result was the important thing but it’s difficult," said the Witham boss.

“Had we had a great performance and lost it, would we feel the same as having a poorish performance and winning it?

“Sometimes you just have to grind a result out.

“I said to the players at the end that we shouldn’t dwell on the negatives.

“There were lots of things we need to look at and we can analyse them at another time but we should enjoy the positives as we’d won a game of football.

“We made it difficult for ourselves and even when we were 2-0 up, I never felt we looked comfortable and Wakering gave us problems in ways they shouldn’t have been able to.

“But even the very best teams have to grind out a win sometimes from a horrible game and that can kick-start them on a run.

“We went to Felixstowe (in November) and drew a scrappy game 2-2 and nothing in that suggested that we’d go on an eight-game unbeaten run.

“I was just relieved that we’d got a point and these things can surprise you.

“So after Great Wakering, I was pleased to have got three points because you look at the league table and you see that they keep us in a place where we don’t feel vulnerable to the relegation zone.

“We jumped up a couple of places, the players went away feeling good about themselves and sometimes you just have to accept the result is more important than the performance.

“I guess the maturity of a team shows that they can get results even when they’re not playing well and in that way, it’s a stepping stone for us."