Walsall v Harrogate Town: Simon Weaver tells players to never stop fighting

The Sulphurites are at Walsall for the penultimate game of their League Two season.

It was the reverse fixture in late November which dropped Harrogate into the relegation zone and they have only spent one matchday, in early December, out of it since.

But Jacob Slater's goal in the ninth added minute to beat Colchester United last week has given them a chance of a seventh Football League season.

With two games to play, bottom-of-the-table Harrogate are level on points with Barrow, one behind Newport County and two off Crawley Town. Barrow host Newport next week.

Slater's strike has lifted spirits, but Weaver has warned his players not to get ahead of themselves.

"Everybody enjoyed Sunday, it was so much better than the previous week," said the Football League's longest-serving manager.

"In a couple of weeks in football you go through all the difficult emotions.

"The win kept us in the fight, kept us alive when I think most people out there thought we'd gone and got relegated.

"We're still in the fight and that's all it is but we were absolutely buzzing, all of us, to get back into that changing room knowing we were still in this.

"But we're bottom of the league, we know where we are. We're not getting ahead of ourselves thinking that was the achievement.

"We've got to reproduce that level of intensity again."

In the division which produced goalkeeper Jimmy Glass' famous goal to send Scarborough down in the last seconds of the 1998-99 campaign, the 1-0 win over Colchester was a reminder never to give up hope.

"I think what it proves to the group is if you keep on going all the way to the final whistle, then you're still in it," said Weaver, who took Harrogate up into the Football League for the first time in 2020.

"You've got to stay in the game first and foremost, even if it's a scruffy encounter and there's apprehension in the air, it's digging in for each other and not getting too exasperated or down.

"Whilst you're still in the game there's always a chance of Jacob Slater winning the game for you."

With all the relegation candidates playing at 3pm in the final two rounds of games, Weaver says he will be across but no obsessed with events elsewhere.

"I check in every so often but it's not manic, it's not all the time," he said.

"With 10 minutes to go last Saturday I knew results were quite positive for us elsewhere.

"We weren't too gung-ho. We put the bodies forward without putting the keeper forward in the last set piece knowing a point was certainly better than nothing.

"There's an awareness of that but we've been in the bottom two for months and it's about come the last whistle of the last game being out of the bottom two."

Twelfth in the table, Walsall know they will be back in League Two next season, although not who will be managing them, with Darren Byfield in caretaker control.

"It could make them dangerous, there's no pressure on them," warned Weaver, who has lost striker Mason Bennett to injury for the final two games.

"They've got a good guy in charge who I'm sure will be wanting the position on a full-time basis. They'll be strong.

"we'll be know they're a big team physically and quick on the counter-attack. We know their strengths, we've got plenty of them.

"How we approach the game will be equally steely, determined, and we want something from the game."