Midweek joy for in-form New Mills at Stockport Georgians

Saturday's 2-2 away draw at leaders Stockport Town was followed by a 2-0 win at seventh-placed Stockport Georgians as goals by Teddy Osipitan and Marcus Dibble left the Millers nine points short with seven games to go.

But joint boss Dave Birch said: “Over the last seven or eight games, if you take Sandbach out of it, we have had some very tough games against the better teams in the division and had some very good results.

“We have players coming back from injury and the squad is looking a lot stronger, so we will just keep plugging away.

“We still have to play teams in and around us. We just want to win games and see where it takes us.

"If we fall short it won't be through the last seven games, it will be the major struggles we had early season and mid season.

"It's out of our hands.

“We have another tough game on Saturday against Ellesmere, who are in a play-off position.

“We beat them a couple of weeks ago away from home at one of the most notoriously difficult places to get a result in the division, especially on a Tuesday night.

"So we will go into it with confidence on the back of some decent results.”

He added: “Georgians are five or six points above us and have had a really good season after promotion from the Manchester League last year.

“It is a tough place to go and I don't think many teams have gone there and got much this season.

“It was a cold night and the pitch actually started to harden with frost after half-time.

“It was a good performance and we defended really well.

“We gave young Ollie Parker his debut. He came in and did absolutely fantastic.

"We signed him from Ashton United U21s and it was his first ever game in non-league football.

“He was absolutely outstanding for a young lad. He is a centre half but we played him at full back as Jake Wright, who has been fantastic for us, was ill.

"He was only drafted in at the last minute.

"It was also a big boost to have Kyle Hawley back in the side too.