HANDS up, who’s tuned in to Love Island this week? Having been a Love Island virgin until it was announced a certain Luke T was entering the house, I have now watched exactly one more episode than I had before our injured right-back swaggered in.

Now, admittedly the fast forward button was used excessively until our love seeker turned up and as much as I’m rooting for him to find his one while in there (that’s how it works, right?), I’m loathe to watch much more of it.

There was absolutely zero mention of Darlo and no wider conversation about the merits of National League North football. Surely such topics of conversation would be a real winner with the bevy of beauties cooing over him upon his entrance. Anyhow, good luck to the lad. He’s unavailable due to injury and his appearance on the show casts no shadow on either the lad’s or the club’s level of professionalism even if some commentators may think otherwise.

Anyhow, that’s enough about Love Island. I’m procrastinating as we need to move on to the real topic of the week, the comfortable defeat at Chester. Fortunately, I picked a great Saturday to do some decorating rather than hitting the road, so I saw none of it.

By the sounds of things, we never really got going and that naturally generated a degree of frustration from those who did make the journey. Unfortunately, as good as a lot of our performances have been, there has also been a few poor showings. Quite often, it’s been the longer journeys. Gloucester, King’s Lynn, Brackley and Leamington immediately spring to mind.

When you’ve made the journey and then there’s little in the performance to take positives from, it is hard to digest. There is, however, always perspective to be had. As frustrating as the defeats this season have been, we are sitting sixth in the table. We are far exceeding our expectations for the season. We also put in an excellent performance last Tuesday away to a tough Guiseley side which is likely to have taken something out of the legs of the players. We have a squad which has played a lot of games and is carrying their fair share of niggles and knocks.

Privately, before the Guiseley game, I was thinking if we could secure two points from the two away games, I’d be happy. As it was, we picked up three in the first game which meant the tough trip to Chester felt a bit more like a free hit. It was always going to be a difficult trip and it’s a testament to how far we have come this season that the defeat and the manner of it has been met with such disappointment.

Hopefully, we can channel the disappointment to refocus minds ahead of Saturday’s game at home to Guiseley. As we saw at Nethermoor Park, the Lions like to play a similarly high tempo game to us. It will be another tough game against a side whose away form is pretty handy. With two long, awkward away trips to follow (at Boston and Kidderminster), it places a degree of pressure on getting the win to keep up our push for the playoffs.

I gather from a lot of the comments I’ve seen from those who were at Chester that there was a Will Hatfield-shaped hole in the middle of the park, so let’s cross our fingers for him to be superglued back together to face his old side again. He may not always wear the captain’s armband but he is the principle leader on the field and I wouldn’t like to think that he was going to be absent for too long.