UPDATED: Still was waiting for a ‘disappointment’ like Welling

The Hatters crashed out of the FA Cup with a 2-1 defeat at Skrill Premier rivals Welling United and Still wants to now see how his charges respond.

He said: “Sometimes, this might sound crazy to people that don’t actually do this job, you actually wait for a disappointment.”

“You don’t want to get to the last six games of the season and get the first disappointment and you don’t overcome it for the next five games.

“Disappointment is the thing that can keep you growing, and if you don’t know disappointment, sometimes it’s hard to react to it.

“So we have to always remember that disappointment can be a spur, and that’s what I think.

“It spurs me, it should spur the players, and as the season goes on, for the ones it doesn’t disappoint, it tells me something about their character and tells me maybe that’s where we need to move things around and change things.”

Still is still reeling from Saturday’s FA Cup exit too, as he continued: “Do I enjoy losing? No I don’t, not in any competition at any time.

“I picked a team on Saturday that I thought could get a result. Although we changed the team, I would never pick a team that I didn’t think had the best chance of winning.

“I would never do that, I don’t think it’s right, not fair, so I always pick a team I think can win.”

But he is refusing to draw too many conclusions from their cup defeat and sees knockout competitions as being very different to the ‘bread and butter’ of the league.

Still said: “I put winning runs in categories to be honest. And I know it sounds silly, but I don’t equate cups to league.

“Your league’s your bread and butter, that’s every week, getting on with it.

“Cups, with the greatest of respect, you can have a great run of games, a poor runs of games.

“I think it’s hard to equate the cups with the league, I think that at the end of the season the best team wins the league.

“I don’t necessarily think the best team wins the cup. So I don’t equate the two.

“We had a tough away game in the FA Cup, against Woking, we changed the team, it won 1-0.

“We had a tough away game in the cup this week, we changed the team and it lost 2-1.

“Nothing to do with the league for me.”

Traditional non-league team Braintree will no doubt be gunning to take Town’s scalp for a third time in a row at Cressing Road, and Still is adamant his players must rise to the challenge.

He continued: “The way that I look at it is that wherever we go and play, it’s going to be by and large a big game for the team that we play, I understand that and I think everyone understands it.

“But that’s the challenge for players. It makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker.

“And when I came into this job I said I don’t do quick fixes. I don’t.

“Gradually I get to know players’ temperament, I get to know their character, and bring players, but gradually you get to find out and you start to make little changes and that.

“And the character that you have to have are the people that say ‘what’s the challenge? Can we overcome that challenge? What’s the next challenge?’

“And that’s how you build it. And I actually love the challenge, because it tells me a lot.

“The weak get weaker, the strong get stronger. And that’s the beauty of this I think.

“When we go and play, it’s always a challenge.

“We’ve met most of the challenges this year, didn’t meet the challenge first game of the season. I think every other time we have.

“I don’t think we were good at Wrexham, but I take responsibility for Wrexham, I picked the wrong team.

“But other than that I think we’ve met the challenges. If something’s happened in a game, we’ve reacted to it.

“We’ve been behind and come back, we’ve scored goals, we’ve not conceded, we’ve always reacted to the challenge.”

And Still added: “Between now and the end of the season that’s what we’ve got to do. I’m sure there’s going to be a stage of this season, where we go two or three games not great.

“And I’m sure there’s going to be a stage of this season where we go two or three looking really, really good, but it’s how you react to the disappointment, and we’re going to have them.

“All the teams are going to have disappointments, reacting to the disappointment.

“In terms of league and performance I’ve been happy, but we’ve just got to keep growing now, keep growing in the league.”