Braintree Town forward Simeon Akinola is excited that the club are offering free entry to everyone for their next home game in the Vanarama Conference Premier.

The Iron have two away games coming up in the next week – Saturday’s trip to Forest Green Rovers and then at Torquay United on Tuesday – but their next home action on March 24 will be against AFC Telford when no-one will have to pay to get through the turnstiles.

The initiative is a bold one by the club that they hope will bring a bumper attendance on the night as well as generating increased support for the future and Akinola is looking forward to playing in front of a packed Miles Smith Stadium.

“It makes so much difference,” he said.

“When we played at Bristol Rovers recently and saw the crowd (of more than 6,000), everyone was absolutely buzzing.

“When we were lining up, you could see in the faces of people like Mitch (Brundle) how exciting it was to be playing in front of that number of people.

“It was the biggest crowd that I had played in front of personally and was brilliant.

“We expect a big crowd for that game against Telford and hopefully it is a big one.

“We’ll look to enjoy it and it should be a good game.”

Akinola and his team-mates will be hoping for a repeat of the result they enjoyed in their last home fixture – Saturday’s 1-0 win against Gateshead.

It was an important one as it ended a run of four back-to-back defeats and Akinola feels it can trigger a surge towards a top-ten finish.

He said: “We said at the beginning of the game that the three points were absolutely crucial.

“Even though we’d been playing well, we’d been on a bad run and results hadn’t been favourable and it was good to get a few points.

“A run like we’ve had can put pressure on you as you start to look down the table and we know we’re not mathematically safe yet, but hopefully we can put some results together now on the back of this one.

“We can start looking up and aim for a top-ten finish.”