Shame that, but I can’t help thinking that it merely confirmed the inevitable.

The maths required for us to win the league just didn’t stack up. I couldn’t see Mansfield dropping enough points for us to be going to Field Mill on the last day of the season with a shot at catching them, although I admit that I was willing to reassess that opinion after about twenty minutes when we were totally dominating Woking and Barrow got a penalty. A couple of minutes later Mansfield were ahead though, and soon our own match turned irreversibly against us.

I hope I’m right, but oddly this afternoon cold turn out to be the best thing that could happen to us. Four games in eight days is an awful lot to ask of a team, and Andy Morrell had little scope to rotate his squad. If we’d kept going like that, in a Quixotic pursuit of Mansfield, we’d have probably ended up in the play-offs anyway, and frankly we’d have been on our knees.

With the title now clearly beyond us, Morrell and Billy Barr have a chance to manage the rest of the season, nursing players through to ensure we hit the post-season with the squad as intact as possible. With that in mind, the most worrying aspect of the game was the loss of Martin Riley and Dean Keates to injury.

Of course, we don’t want to have a collapse in form, as hitting the play-offs with a fit but out of form squad would be a problem too. But we’ve a string of three home games to impose ourselves in, so we should be able to rotate judiciously and still keep the results ticking over.

Neither Jay Harris nor Danny Wright, two of our most reliable players, were themselves today, which illustrated the value of keeping our key assets fresh. Easing them and their team mates through to May has to be the most important target for the rest of the season.

Perhaps giving Harris Tuesday to pick up a Sergio Ramos/Xabi Alonso style “accidental” yellow card to ensure he doesn’t go into the play-offs with a suspension hanging over his head would be a good idea too!