Curle tells players to hold nothing back in promotion pursuit

Cobblers boss Keith Curle has told his players to ‘leave nothing in the starting blocks’ when they begin their ‘sprint’ for promotion against Cheltenham Town in just a few hours.

Town host the Robins at the PTS Academy Stadium this evening (7.45pm kick-off) before heading to Whaddon Road for the return leg on Monday (8pm).

Get through those matches unscathed and a Wembley final against either Colchester United or Exeter City awaits, where the Cobblers would be just 90 minutes from a place in League One.

“This is the sprint now,” said Curle. “We’re not preparing for a 46-game season, we’re preparing for a sprint which means you don’t leave anything in the starting blocks and you don’t miss the gun.

“We get out, we play how we want to play and we impose ourselves on the game.

“We respect the opposition and the threats that they have but our mindset is very much on what we’re about and what we want to do.

“All players will have anxieties, fears, nerves but the best way to abate those is to understand what your job is and what’s required from you.

"We haven’t tried to dampen the occasion. Because of how we play, we want to have intensity.

"I call them fundamentals because the more we're in-tune with them instinctively, it's a chain reaction and we land on the ball, we know where we're going, we get people in and around the ball, we land on second balls and we want the ball delivered.

"We know we've got quality delivery from wide areas and deep positions and we've got willing workers to compete for the first contact and then we need to win second contact.

"We want to have layers upon layers upon layers of a forward-thinking mentality."