Rugby Town manager Carl Adams optimistic at season's half way stage

Rugby Town’s weekend 3-1 home victory over high-flying Newport Pagnell made it ten wins from their last eleven outings for Carl Adams’s team, as Valley reached the mid-way point in their UCL Premier South term sitting in sixth place in the table.

Adams reflected on the recent good form shown by his side, whilst looking forward to the second half of the campaign with a level of optimism.

He said: “I think we’ve shown in the last few games in particular that we are in good form at the moment.

“The lads are working really hard for each other out there, and we’ve just turned over two teams at Butlin Road that have been in incredible form coming into the games.

“There’s still a long way to go this season and plenty of points still to be played for, so it’s important that we maintain our focus of late and generally keep things positive and upbeat.”

Newport’s reverse at Butlin Road was their first UCL away defeat of the season, whilst a week previously Valley had also deservedly beaten their division’s currently unstoppable outfit Hinckley in the FA Vase.

Adams continued: “We’ve still got four of the top sides to come to us in the league, and with that opportunity to make up further ground on them.

“We could also do with one of the top two (Hinckley and Harborough) hitting a sticky patch soon, but below them teams are finally starting to take points off each other and we need to take advantage of that.”

Rugby had adapted to the blustery conditions much better than their visitors on Saturday, with Danico Johnson giving them an early lead - only to be almost immediately pegged back when Danny Webb equalised.

An exquisitely curled strike by David Kolodynski saw the advantage soon restored, but Pagnell missed out on the chance of a second leveller after Kieran Barnes put his penalty wide before the interval.

Town coped well with the wind coming at them in a generally less eventful second period and the visitors rarely looked a threat, with Johnson then adding his second on 68 minutes to all but seal the points.

Next up for Rugby is a trip to Oadby this Saturday for a game that kicks off an hour earlier than normal at 2pm.

Adams will be without both of his scorers against the Leicestershire club though, with Kolodynski unavailable and Johnson suspended for one match after picking up his fifth UCL booking of the season against Newport.

The Valley boss added: “We’re already a few short with injuries, but hopefully there’s enough quality in the squad to cope with this and the ones who are out on Saturday.

“We’ve known for a while that Kolo would be missing at Oadby, so it was good that we were able to have a look at Adam Shaw at Bugbrooke recently for the last 20 minutes or so when the game was pretty much won.

“Kolo’s been in great scoring form of late, but Adam can bring us something a bit different too as he has pace aplenty and is a very direct type of player.”