Second ‘no good’ for Bucks

Skipper Jimmy Turner is rallying his AFC Telford United team-mates to become play-off heroes, insisting: “There are no prizes for coming second.”

Turner has led the side for most of the season, and was wearing the captain’s armband as the Bucks sealed a second-place finish in the Blue Square North with Saturday’s 3-1 away victory over Burscough.

But - proud as he is of that achievement - the 24-year-old defender says that winning the play-offs would be the crowning glory.

And he is fully focused on making a god start in tomorrow evening’s semi-final first leg at Barrow.

“It’s an achievement-and-a-half to have finished second, but the real hard work starts now,” said the determined Turner, ahead of tonight’s final training session.”I don’t want to look back and say we finished second and didn’t go up. I’d rather say we finished fifth and went up, instead of second and not.

“We know what we’ve got to do and hopefully we’ll give a good account of ourselves tomorrow.”

Barrow come into the play-offs as the bookies’ favourites, having put together a 17-game unbeaten run.

They have already defeated Telford at home and away, scoring six goals and conceding none in the process.

“They’re the form team coming into it, and the away trip tomorrow isn’t exactly brilliant as we won’t have as many away fans backing us because it’s such a long way,” admitted Turner.

“We’ve played them twice and both times we’ve been beaten, but I don’t think that tells the whole story.

“The 4-0 at their place was a bit of a freak result, I thought, and at home we conceded two sloppy goals. I thought we dominated the game from then on but just couldn’t break through.”

Barrow completed their preparations with a training session last night, when four of their key players sat out through injury.

Only 16-goal wide midfielder Matt Henney is rated as a serious doubt for tomorrow though, and Dave Bayliss - who is joint manager along with Darren Sheridan - is aware of the threat the Shropshire side pose.

“We’ve beaten Telford twice but that counts for nothing now,” he said. “Each of the teams in the play-offs are there on merit and any one of them could win the second promotion spot.”