Warrington Rylands cannot get carried away with winning form

However, manager Dave McNabb has warned his players that they will “come unstuck” if they get carried away with their good recent form.

Blues have won all four of their matches since the turn of the year, with Tuesday’s 2-0 victory at Colne taking them beyond their previous best run of three straight victories.

Tuesday's 2-0 win at Colne was Warrington Rylands' fourth in a row. Picture by Mark Percy

This coupled with a dip in form for long-time league leaders Marine, who were beaten by McNabb’s men at the weekend, has allowed them to jump to second in the West Division, four points behind table-toppers Workington.

Their next outing sees them travel to struggling Kidsgrove Athletic on Saturday, kick off 3pm, and McNabb says they will head to Staffordshire with confidence.

However, he stressed the importance of not looking too far ahead as their promotion push approaches its business end.

“There’s a massive zip around training and a buzz among the players, but you can’t start thinking about going on long winning runs,” he said.

“It just doesn’t happen in this league. To win four games on the bounce is a massive achievement and the first time we’ve done it at this level.

“It means we’ll go into Saturday with confidence, but we’re going to a side that are fighting for their lives.

“It will be a difficult place to go again, so we have to just focus on that.

“We try and maintain focus on our own game because if you get too far ahead of yourself, you will come unstuck.

“Every team’s good – we’ve just played a Colne side that had 10 men for most of the game and they hit the post twice.”

Kane Drummond scores during Blues' 3-0 win over Saturday's opponents Kidsgrove Athletic in the reverse fixture back in October. Picture by Mark Percy

From McNabb’s point of view, one of the more satisfying things about their form will be that their four straight wins have seen them concede just one goal – an own goal from Sam Egerton in the 2-1 win over Mossley on January 8.

While putting the ball in the net has never been an issue – they are the division’s highest scorers with 58 goals – keeping the back door closed has often been a source of head-scratching.

McNabb hopes his side have “turned a corner” defensively having highlighted concentration as the main problem at the back.

“We’ve been working on our defence a lot,” he said.

“Although we’ve been conceding goals, it’s been difficult from a coaching point of view because a lot of them have been individual mistakes.

“The one goal we’ve let in during this run we’re on was an own goal, so an individual mistake.

“If we can cut those out, we very rarely get opened up. If someone scores from 30 yards, you just have to hold your hands up.

“In general play, we’re good but we just lack a bit of concentration at times that leads to us conceding sloppy goals.

“Hopefully we’ve turned a corner now.”

This week’s games saw two more players make their Rylands debuts having been added to McNabb’s squad.

Left-back Max Allen started both games having returned from playing college football in the United States while experienced striker Tom Bentham made a substitute appearance in the win at Colne having joined on a 28-day loan from Ashton United.

Max Allen started both of this week's games at left-back. Picture by John Hopkins

Ahead of the trip to Kidsgrove, Blues’ freshest injury concern is defender Adam Buxton, who was substituted in the early stages of Tuesday’s game.

They will also hope to have fellow defender Sam Egerton and midfielder David Webb available after both missed the win in Lancashire.