Southport head to North Ferriby United in Vanarama National League North action on Saturday, and Kevin Davies’ side are full of confidence after Jason Gilchrist’s 3-0 dismantling of Gainborough Trinity last weekend.



North Ferriby have just a single win to their name for the entire league campaign, beating Blyth Spartans in August, and have since gone on a 25 match winless run. They travelled to Brackley in midweek, slipping to a second successive 3-0 defeat, after previously suffering the same scoreline at the hands of AFC Telford

Ahead of the game manager Kevin Davies told southportfc.net: “We’ve had a good week after last week’s win even though conditions haven’t been great on the training pitch with the weather. We’ve got a good healthy group of players in now in morning training, there’s a good spirit around the place so we’re looking forward to the game.”

“We want to continue looking at our standards, our work ethic, challenging the players, keeping on top of them, keeping them driven. The expectation that we have for the team is to continue working extremely hard, to ensure we’re one of the fittest teams in the league. With the quality that we have now, we’re becoming a very strong, hard to beat group.”

But Davies knows North Ferriby’s league position is no excuse for complacency in the squad ahead of Saturday’s game.

“It was a good complete away performance last week, this is another week now where it’s all about the mentality of the players and the way they approach this game. We can’t think we’re going to turn up and win this game. North Ferriby had a couple of draws recently so we have to go and make sure we take the game to them.”

“We’ve prepared as we would any other game, possibly harder than usual actually. We had a fitness session on Tuesday and it was probably one of the hardest sessions we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

“Jon McCarthy went to go and watch them in midweek with Richard Boryszczuk, so we’ve prepared as we would do, and we know our game-plan can go and earn us the three points. We’ve worked even harder this week to prepare for this game, we’re not underestimating them.”

The last meeting between the two sides was back in November, when North Ferriby left the Merseyrail Community Stadium with a point after a 2-2 draw. Southport recovered from a goal down to take the lead in that match, only to concede an equaliser nine minutes later. Since then Southport have made key additions in personnel, giving the team much more strength and consistency.