WOKING boss Darren Sarll is cautiously optimistic that his side’s two-week break from competitive action has given them the impetus to face a flurry of games this month, beginning with the visit of Maidstone United on Saturday.

Sarll told the News & Mail: “[The hiatus] was an opportunity for me as a manager to say ‘We need to get some rest into the players’.

“I saw some real fatigue in the last game [the 1-1 draw with Alt-rincham on 19 November] following the Oxford United match and the schedule that we’d had leading up to that. So I thought it was really vital that rest was more important than physical development.

“It was nice to be able to give the players that time away from each other, so when they came back in this week they had new stories and new experiences to share – and the atmosphere was very vibrant.

“But the worst thing when you have a break is when it comes to the next game and the human nature of opinions means that everyone says ‘They should be fresh and raring to go’.

“Football doesn’t always happen like that. Sometimes you get into a nice vein of physical momentum where your body just keeps going and going. So we’ll have to guard against the players stagnating and then not being ready to really hit the ground running this Saturday, [and we’ll do that] by training very hard.”

For the full story, see the 1 December issue of the News & Mail.