Knaresborough Town looking forward to regular football after frustrating six-week period

Knaresborough Town manager Simon Parkes. Picture: Gerard Binks

The calling-off of Tuesday’s NCEL Premier Division clash at AFC Emley due to a waterlogged pitch means that the Manse Lane outfit have now completed just two fixtures in the space of six weeks.

Following a slow start to the season, Boro’s campaign began to gather some momentum and the club looked on track to break into the top half of the table prior to back-to-back defeats to Garforth Town and Hemsworth over the festive period - results which boss Parkes puts down to his team’s inactivity.

“We’ve had a bit of an indifferent time of late. The Christmas period is normally a busy one but we’ve only played twice in six weeks now,” he said.

“It’s been very hard to gain any momentum, to have any kind of consistency about what we’ve been doing because of those games being postponed.

“Even though we have been doing as much fitness work and training as we can, it’s been challenging because we haven’t had the matches, which is what the players need.

“We’ve had back-to-back losses against two very strong teams in Garforth and Hemsworth but we feel pretty hard done by. Some decisions didn’t go out way against Garforth and we missed a lot of good chances, then against Hemsworth we just weren’t at the races for the first 45 minutes.

“But I’d put those issues down to the fact that we’ve not been playing games of late.”

Boro, currently 11th in the table, are due to return to action this Saturday when they entertain seventh-placed Silsden (3pm).

Ahead of that game, Parkes has warned his players that they need to become “more ruthless” in front of goal.

"Silsden will be a tough test, January is going to be a tricky month fixture-wise and if we want to pick up points then we need to start taking our chances,” he added.

"That’s been my main message to the lads. We had so many clear-cut opportunities against Garforth and didn’t take them. They had one chance, took it and won the game 1-0.

"We need to be a lot more ruthless in the final third.”