The aesthetics of Braintree Town’s play won’t bother Matt Fry today, as long as they register another three-point Vanarama National League haul when Chester FC come to the Avanti Stadium.

The 25-year-old defender admitted that Tuesday’s game against Wrexham wasn’t the prettiest as both teams battled on a difficult playing surface, but he was pleased to see them end a four-game losing run with a 1-0 victory.

And he will happily take another “ugly” win at the weekend.

“It has been tough with not playing much football and all the boys have been itching to get back out on the pitch,” he said.

“It wasn’t the result we wanted at Boreham Wood (on Boxing Day) and then there were a couple of cup games where we didn’t get the results.

“Dan (Cowley) is a competitive manager so we knew losing that many games on the bounce was tough.

“I don’t think he’s ever lost that many together before so we wanted to turn it round and really dug in.

“It was an ugly performance but a great three points.

“There are no pictures on the league table – it doesn’t matter how you win.

“Wrexham and Chester both play on decent surfaces and when some of the Wrexham boys turned up and started moaning about the pitch, I think it put us on the front foot a little bit.

“But take nothing away from the boys because it was a great performance and a massive three points for us and we’ll look to do the same on Saturday as well.”

The win against Wrexham took Braintree up to 11th in the National League table on 43 points and they are now just six points shy of the play-off places with up to six games in hand over some sides above them.

However, boss Cowley is keeping the focus on getting to the 50 points that he feels will guarantee their place in the division for another year.

He added: “It gets us to within seven points of our target and that’s all we’re thinking about. We’re not thinking about play-offs until we get to 50 points.

“Once we get there, we will redefine our targets.

“We can’t get carried away because this league is so tough and it is a mountain for us just to keep our status in the league.”

Cowley said he had a couple of injury concerns that would be watched ahead of the visit of Chester.

He added: “Kenny (Davis) has a bit of a tight hamstring so we’ll monitor that and Matty Paine has a bit of a tight IT band so we’ll look at that as well.”