SPENNYMOOR Town joint manager Bernard Morley says there second half reaction against Brackley Town shows that they are not prepared to let their season fizzle out.

Moors earned themselves a 1-1 draw against the promotion chasers at the Brewery Field as a spirted performance led to Jude Oyibo’s stoppage time equaliser. The result means they are now six points off the National League North play-offs with plenty of other teams in contention, alongside Darlington.

Morley said: “Massive in terms of application. We said at the end, that is the hallmark of mine and Antony’s teams. Leave everything on the pitch and nothing left to give. Ultimately, you don’t get the result at the end of the game but you’ve give it your all and that’s sometimes is something you have to accept.

“First half, we didn’t start the game well enough. Simple as. If you give sides like Brackley a platform, they will build on it. They got the goal and they had put eight cross into our box in the first five minutes so straight away we were on the back foot.

“You come in at half-time 1-0 down, you’ve missed a penalty, Jordan Preston has missed a header from three yards out which was a great save and as much as we can say we weren’t at it, we still could or should have been 2-1 up at half-time.”

Morley and fellow joint manager are reserving hopes that they can finish in the top seven this season after a poor start to the campaign. They have nine league games left in the campaign.

With Moors a goal down at half-time, he said the management team asked the question of his players and they answered it in the second half.

Morley continued: “We spoke about having 9.5 games to go and the effort and the desire and all that gets put into supporting Spennymoor along with the sacrifices that we make.

“We were prepared to let the season fizzle out? If that weren’t going to be the case then we had to get a massive reaction. That was one of the most emotional games of football I’ve been involved in 13 years. It was relentless. We were on the front foot for 50 minutes.

“Brackley are a good side. They’ve got the best defensive record in the league. We’ve asked massive questions of them today and to get the goal as late as we did just shows how many bodies we committed. We had right centre-half putting cross in the box. We had to find a way to get a result in the end. The players have to walk away and pat themselves on the back because they’ve done that.”