THE crowds for our last two games have been fantastic.

To play in front of 7,500 on Saturday and then 6,500 on Tuesday is more like what I would love us to have every week.

We have been lucky to have the two games on the bounce, but if we had played Hull City on Boxing Day as it was arranged, then maybe we would have had more.

With us at home again against Lincoln City on Saturday, we want as many people as possible to come along.

I know because of the way things have fallen that it will be our third home game in the space of a week, and we also have to remember that it is expensive for people.

But the atmosphere we have had in our last two games has been fantastic.

And after our performance against Hull I'm very hopeful a lot more will come back.

Obviously, we won't get the 3,500 from Hull, but you never know, a few of them might even come back!

It would have been easy to expect the players to be tired and leg weary after Saturday's game with Fulham and with the pitch the way it was, but they didn't let us down.

The players all know they should be doing better than they have been, but at least now there is a quiet confidence around the club.

Last season we went on a good little run after our FA Cup campaign had been brought to an end at Leicester City, so I'm hoping it will a case of dj vu for us this season.

We've 19 games left to fit into 11-and-a-half weeks, but with players getting injured (Richard Cooper, Lee Nogan and Gary Hobson were all injured in the 2-1 victory over Hull on Tuesday) it definitely will not be plain sailing.

We knew that we had this run coming up, so we did try to rest one or two players.

We gave Nick Richardson a week off and I think the good of that rest showed with his performance against Hull.

I'm not sure whether I will blood the young players in this period at the moment. I don't want to put them in a situation where so much is at stake.

This means I will have to look at the possibility at bringing in a loan signing - I'm not sure in what position yet, it all depends on who is available.

We have got Mark Maley back in training though, while Peter Duffield came back for longer than we thought on Tuesday and looked sharp.

His fellow forward, Alex Mathie, has also started to get the odd run together and seems to have shaken off his injuries.

Personally speaking, after the Hull game, I went around the players in the changing rooms and said 'thank-you' - that's what it meant to me.

After the game someone asked me whether I was interested in stats because apparently it was my 650th game in charge as a football manager.

I never realised it had been that long, but roll on the 1,000th!

Updated: 10:30 Thursday, January 31, 2002