FORGET the play-offs – it will be a relegation scrap if we're not careful, James Simmonds has warned his Hampton & Richmond Borough team-mates.
Tuesday night's 2-1 home defeat to Hendon, which followed a loss by the same score at Margate on Saturday, meant four games without a win for the Beavers, who slipped to 13 th in the Ryman Premier table.
It is a worrying plunge for a team who led the table in early November, but are now 11 points off a play-off place ad only six off the bottom four.
Simmonds said: “If I'm honest, we need to worry about our next game rather than the play-offs as we're in free-fall at the moment, and we need to stop the rot or we could end up in a dogfight at the other end of the table if it carries on.
“That would be disappointing after the start we had to the season. With the players we have we should be up there, a lot of them should be playing higher than the Ryman League, but we're on a bad run and just can't snap out of it.”
Simmonds believes there are many reasons for Hampton's plummeting fortunes, but reckons the lack of training facilities have proved costly.
Normally, the pitch at Beveree is used, but with it suffering from drainage problems over the winter, leading to a string of postponed games, the squad have either travelled elsewhere to train or not trained at all.
Simmonds said: “We've not really had a training facility and just turned up on match days some weeks. Sometimes we train on the main pitch, but a lot of games were called off so that stopped.
“We've been training all over the place, and some weeks its cancelled, but even at this level players need to train regularly, and it's having a effect.
“There have also been a lot of changes in the team through injuries and the gaffer tinkering, plus
we've been unlucky in games, dominating but not killing teams off.”
The only person who does seem to be taking his chances is Charlie Moone, whose goals against Margate and Hendon took his tally for the season to 23.
However, Simmonds admitted Hampton are relying far too much on the former Woking man's goals, and need to start chipping in to help him.
He added: “Fair play to Charlie, he can always pull a wordly goal out of nothing. We're creating chances but not taking them apart from Charlie, we've been relying on him far too much.”
