BRADFORD (Park Avenue)'s fanatic supporters have been praised for dedication to the cause as they head out on the road again to Southport.

Avenue had a vital mid-week trip to third-placed Spennymoor Town to contend with and boss Mark Bower was impressed with the supporter turnout, who were rewarded with a 2-0 victory.

He said: "We had a fair number up there at Spennymoor on a Tuesday night - such a long way for a game that had been rearranged at short notice, it’s absolutely fantastic.

"I’m sure they’ll be out in force again at Southport on Saturday and they’re a massive help.

"It was brilliant at the end of the game, all the players were going over to celebrate with them. We just want to keep that good feeling going and hopefully we can be celebrating again on Saturday with them."

Avenue come up against 14th-placed Southport who linger in mid-table without much to play for.

These sides can be just as troublesome as those under pressure to perform and get points on the board to avoid relegation, go for promotion, or secure the title, according to Bower.

He said: "Southport have probably got a lot to do to get in the play-offs, they’re definitely not going to go down, so they can play with that bit of freedom and no pressure that can make them dangerous.

"But they’ve just got good players, so we know that we’ve got to be right at it, we know we’ve got to do as well, if not better than we did on Tuesday night to ensure that we get a result."

Avenue's games are coming thick and fast as postponements finally catch up, and the season draws to a close.

It could be tempting to look beyond the next immediate fixture to try build a picture and put in place a strategy to solidify Avenue's promotion push.

Three days after the Southport tie, they'll come up against fellow play-off rivals AFC Telford, who arguably present a tougher prospect than Saturday's match.

But Bower maintains it's a game-by-game policy for himself and his charges.

He said: "We won’t be resting players. We may make a few changes to freshen it up in order to go out and win the game.

"There will be no thoughts whatsoever on the Telford game going into Saturday’s match."

Bower added: "Hopefully when we’ve done that, we’ll take it from there. We’ll look at the Telford game and decided what we’re doing with that one.

"There’s no point trying to beat Telford if you’re just going to give away a game against Southport so that’s the focus and that’s what we’ll be looking to do."