Travelling more than a thousand miles in eight days alongside holding down day jobs may faze a lot of part-time footballers but Braintree Town aren’t a club with just any old players.

In a mirror of their epic week of travelling towards the end of last season, the Iron face a mammoth task in the coming days, but Dan Sparkes insists they will rise to the challenge once again.

The Vanarama Conference Premier fixture planners have done the Iron few favours by handing them a trip to FA Halifax Town on Saturday, followed by a journey to Bristol Rovers on Tuesday and a trek up to Grimsby Town the following weekend.

That represents trips totalling 1,082 miles in eight days against three sides chasing promotion this year, but their spirit showed through in even more testing circumstances last season and Sparkes sees no reason why it shouldn’t this time.

“There are no fears,” he said. “I believe the squad is stronger now than ever.

“We have strength in depth and the fact that we’ve sent two quality players (Charlie Strutton and Dan Walker) out on loan just shows that.

“It won’t faze us.

“We had that big week last year when we played Halifax, Southport and Gateshead all in the same week and you can’t get much worse than that.

“We will go into it expecting to get results.

“Situations like that seem to bring out our best."