MANAGER Mark Ashford hopes his Witham Town players can find the Friday feeling once again when they kickstart their weekend by hosting Aveley at the Village Glass Stadium.

Despite sitting bottom of the Bostik League division north table following a 3-0 defeat at Soham Town Rangers last weekend, Witham have enjoyed some excellent results while in action on Friday nights this season, including FA Trophy wins against Coggeshall Town and AFC Dunstable and drawing with high-flying Heybridge Swifts two weeks ago.

So Ashford has asked his players to rise to the task once more against Aveley (kick-off 7.45pm) and make sure they give their fans the Friday feeling again.

He said: "We have got ourselves into a bit of a cycle that we can't break out of where we have had a good performance and then haven't been able to match it in the next one or two and have found ourselves losing out by narrow margins.

"We've then recovered quickly and had another good performance which we then haven't been able to back up again.

"So it's formed a bit of a cycle, but it does show that we have always bounced back from disappointments.

"The Heybridge game a couple of weeks ago was an example of that and before that were Dunstable and Coggeshall in the FA Trophy.

"We have always turned up against good sides and done well and we have to do that again against Aveley.

"This will be the fifth Friday night game we've played and we haven't lost any of the previous four.

"In those Friday night games, we have always performed really well and I've said to the players that we need to keep that going against Aveley.

"We need to really turn it on and lift levels to see what it brings."

The Town boss said he would have to assess the fitness of Sam Ashford ahead of the game against Aveley because he would have only just stepped off the plane from the Falkland Islands where he was playing for an English FA Representative side last weekend.

"Sam will be returning after an 8,000 mile flight the day before so we'll see how he has recovered," said Mark Ashford.

"We've got a couple who are unavailable, but we've got no new injury concerns."

Witham will follow the game against Aveley with a trip to Tilbury on Tuesday.

Ahead of the weekend's games, the Dockers sit just one place above rock-bottom Witham in the table.