ROSS HANNAH admits it was vitally important Chester secured victory over Solihull Moors to avoid being cut adrift in the relegation zone.

With Leyton Orient thrashing play-off chasing Sutton 4-1, the Blues would’ve been five points adrift of safety if they had failed to beat Solihull Moors, a fact not lost on the 31-year-old striker, who came off the bench to head home a winner on 77 minutes.

“It’s three points and that is all it is. This month is massive for us, we know that,” he said.

“We’re not going to be judged at the end of the season on the Dagenham game.

“It was disappointing, I’m not getting away from that, but we’ll be judged on this month moving forward and hopefully we can pull away from the difficult position we’re in.

“But we’re not getting carried away, we’ve not done anything yet. But it’s three massive points we needed and hopefully it’s the start of a successful month.

“With Orient winning, that five point gap if we hadn't won would’ve been massive.

“The lads from Solihull knew exactly how important that game was at the final whistle and so did we.

“Winning that game is absolutely huge for the position of this football club and hopefully we can kick on, climb the table and hopefully get ourselves in a much better position.”

Introduced on the hour mark, Hannah notched his sixth goal of the campaign and probably his most important to-date, to ensure the Blues recorded just a third home win in 2017.

“I love scoring goals – whether it’s in midweek against a Bristol Rovers reserves team, or in training or whatever – it’s what I like to do, and it’s what I’m in the team to do,” he said.

“It’s great to come on and get the goal that secures a big three points.

“I must apologise to the fan who I kicked snow at! He came down to the front and I was ecstatic to score such an important goal like that and I’ve lost the run of myself!

“It was great to get the goal and help the team out. There needed to be a response from that Dagenham performance as that was a poor second-half and we all know that.

“It was a completely different game here, we needed to turn up and be counted and see who the big characters were.”

In what was a ‘relegation six-pointer’, the Sheffield-born forward hailed the impact of experienced team-mate Tom Shaw, introduced as a half-time substitute after Andy Halls needed stitches to his nose after suffering a blow to the face.

“Three points was the most important thing,” he continued.

“It was a six-pointer and we knew everyone needed to turn up and be counted for, roll our sleeves up and grind a result out however it needed to be.

“We’ve shown character in a big game. It wasn’t the prettiest game but at the end of the day we’ve got the three points and it’s massive for us.

“I thought the first-half was pretty even to be honest.

“At half-time Hallsy gets a knock on his nose, so Tom comes on and it looked like he hadn’t been away.

“He brings that experience, bit of calmness in midfield and that improved us in the second-half and thankfully we got that vital goal.”

Hannah was impressed by the performance of on-loan Crewe Alex striker Daniel Udoh, who had only signed for the Blues 48 hours prior to the weekend but was thrown straight into the starting line-up by boss Marcus Bignot.

“Daniel did well, he put himself about and showed the good things he’s going to bring to the team, him and Aki did really well together,” he said.

“They offer something different. In those types of games there’s pressure for both sides but chances were few and far between, it was just a case of whichever team was more clinical would get the win.”