Heybridge Swifts suffered only their second league defeat last weekend, under manager Julian Dicks, since the ex-Birmingham, West Ham and Liverpool full-back was appointed to the Scraley Road hot-seat in early October.
The Swifts went down 3-1 at lowly Soham Town Rangers, to drop to fourth in the Bostik North table, and they will not find it easy tomorrow when they entertain a young AFC Sudbury side who are still buzzing after a superb comeback win over Tilbury last Saturday.
Mark Morsley’s men rallied from 3-1 down, at half-time, to sink Tilbury 4-3 and so cement themselves in sixth spot, five points adrift of fifth-placed Coggeshall Town, who occupy the last play-off spot.
‘Last Saturday’s win against Tilbury was massive for us, as it was the first time we had dealt with the physical pressing tactics that some of the top sides had tried against us in previous games,” explained AFC Sudbury boss Morsley.
“I knew that if we could get the lads to concentrate on moving the ball quickly and creating our own tempo, then we could be a match for most teams.
“We did this in the second half and thoroughly deserved to turn the 3-1 half-time deficit into a 4-3 victory.
“Things don’t get any easier as we are facing one of the championship favourites in Heybridge this weekend.
“Since the arrival of Julian Dicks their form has been impressive. However, I was really surprised that they slipped up at Soham – no disrespect to Soham –and we will see if this is just a blip or whether they are going to suffer a bad spell.
“For us we will just be going to try and recreate the majority of our performances from the past two months and see where it takes us,” added Morsley.
Before last weekend’s reverse, Heybridge had won seven and drawn the other of their last eight league matches, to move up to second in the league.
Dicks has had a big impact, since he succeeded Jody Brown on October 4. The 50-year-old, who has managed Wivenhoe (2009) and Grays (2009-11), as well as being a coach under Slaven Bilic at West Ham, kicked-off with four straight league wins and has so far overseen 12 wins, two draws and just two defeats in 16 games.
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