BRAINTREE Town must play the opposition and not the occasion as they bid to cement their place in the Vanarama National League South play-offs in front of their own fans on Saturday.

That is the opinion of experienced Iron goalkeeper Nathan McDonald and he hopes they can treat the visit of Gloucester City as just another fixture in the 42-game season rather than getting caught up in any hype surrounding their promotion prospects.

Following a 2-1 win at Truro City last weekend and Tuesday night’s 0-0 draw with Oxford City, Braintree sit seventh in the table and know they must at least match the result of eight-placed St Albans City at Bath City on the final day to secure their place in the top-seven play-off spots.

It could be a tense occasion at the IronmongeryDirect Stadium (kick-off 3pm) and the Iron’s players will need to keep their nerve, so McDonald feels they have to treat it as nothing special to lift the pressure on themselves.

The Iron keeper said it is a positive that Braintree have their destiny in their own hands and he is backing manager Brad Quinton to guide them to success.

He said: “It was frustrating not to get the win on Tuesday, but even if we’d beaten Oxford, we’d still have to get a result on Saturday so nothing has changed really.

“It would have been nice going in with a win, but we’ve had a good run and we’re still unbeaten so we’ll be going into it on a high.

“Brad pushes us and he always has done so this will be no different.

“The thing is that we just have to take it as a normal game.

“If we think of it as a play-off game that we need to win then we’ll put pressure on ourselves so we just have to take it as a regular league game with no pressure.

“I can only speak for myself, but I will go into it thinking that.

“If you go into it with pressure thinking you have to win then nerves might the better of you because you will be doing things you wouldn’t normally do.

“On our day we can beat anyone, so we just have to go out and play our football and we’ll be OK.

“It’s in our hands and ours to throw away, which is a nice position to be in.

“We haven’t got to rely on anyone else’s result and that’s what you want.

“We just have to make sure we turn up on Saturday and use the good team spirit that we have.

“Hopefully the fans will be behind us again and we can get it over the line for them.

“Brad has said for a good few weeks now that if we can get in it then we will win it and I believe in him.”

McDonald was disappointed that the Iron couldn’t force a victory when they hosted Oxford City in midweek, but while he felt the impact of the team’s 650-mile round trip to Cornwall on Saturday had an impact on them, he didn’t want to use that as an excuse for an under par display.

“It was a long trip to Truro,” added the Iron keeper.

“It was good to go down there the day before and stay overnight , but after the game, we left there at 6pm on Saturday and I walked through my door at 2am on Sunday.

“That does catch up with you.

“No matter how much rest you have on the Sunday, it does have an effect the next week and I think you saw that a bit, but you can’t blame that as people have long journeys every week.

“It just wasn’t meant to be our night on Tuesday.

“We kept a clean sheet, which was a positive and we just have to build on it on Saturday.”