Long trips due to Trophy success is no excuse asserts Brabin

PROGRESSION in the FA Trophy has hampered Luton’s league campaign, but manager Gary Brabin has made it clear long midweek trips are no excuse for failure, writes Mark Wood.

Town travel to Darlington for a re-arranged fixture tonight and Brabin is expecting his side to rise to the task.

He said: “The FA Trophy it did move around our three furthest away fixtures, Barrow, Gateshead and Darlington.

“It’s not ideal when you are looking at preparation leading up to a game but that’s no excuse. We’ve got to meet whatever challenge comes our way head on.

“We will look after the lads, give them the right preparation and as long as they look after themselves and buy into what we’re doing I’m sure we can go into every game no matter where it is and give a good account of ourselves.”

And with the chasing pack for a play-off place growing by the minute Brabin knows that they must continue to pick up points to cement their place in the end of season revelries.

He continued: “This is the business end of the season and we can’t let our guard down. I don’t envisage us doing that.

“We’ve just got to keep doing the right things and there were a lot of pluses that came out of Saturday’s game even though we got beat.

“Hopefully we can manage to carry that on and get the right result on Tuesday and another good performance.”

Nine-man Town may have excelled defensively in the 1-0 defeat at York City on Saturday, but Brabin is looking for a different kind of bravery in the coming weeks.

He said: “It’s two different things to be a creative team and to be a battling team. One of the things I think people have questioned with us at times is whether we are strong enough mentally and whether we’ve got the right desire.

“I always feel we have got that. But there’s different types of strength and bravery in terms of getting on the ball and wanting to play football the right way.

“I thought Saturday going down we had to fight, we had to scrap and I think everyone’s seen there what a good, honest bunch of lads we’ve got.”