Bury Town manager Cole Skuse praises players for showing character during recent winless run

Cole Skuse felt that Tuesday night’s 1-0 win over St Ives Town was reward for his Bury Town players for keeping morale high during their recent winless run.

Prior to the victory over Ives in the Southern League Premier Central Division, positive results had been hard to come by for the Blues, who went seven games in all competitions without a victory – a sequence that also saw them bow out of both the FA Cup and FA Trophy.

But despite some tough outings, Skuse has in the main been happy with performances at a higher level. And that, combined with the characters that he has in the dressing room, has helped to keep spirits up.

The former Bristol City and Ipswich Town midfielder said: “I’m still a student of the game in so many ways. Obviously as a manager I’m still wet behind the ears, I’ve not had loads of experience, so you’re forever trying to learn from the best.

“I’m lucky in the sense that I can lean on a few shoulders through some friends, and they say just have a little try of this or have a little try of that and implement this.

“So you’re trying to tweak little bits without going so far left field that it derails things. We can’t lose track of two years of really good work, but you do try little things, little nuggets that might just sow a seed of positivity or sow a seed of a different option maybe whilst you’re in certain scenarios.

“You do try little bits, but in terms of morale, we’ve got some really, really good characters. I know every manager says it, but it’s such a big thing for a changing room to have the right characters, characters that when the chips are down ever so slightly you can lean on them to give you a little bit of a boost – we’ve got plenty.

“The changing room is their space, it’s their private space and if you’ve got players in there that will look after it, that’s golden.

“We’ve got a top group, and if we’d had really poor performances, really poor results, the morale might be slightly different.

“But the fact that we’ve been shown the cards of some of the big fish in the league and gone toe to toe with them, it does create a little bit of positivity.”

Bury, who are in 12th position, will hit the road tomorrow afternoon to face Quorn (3pm) before they make the short journey down the A14 on Wednesday evening to renew their rivalry with Needham Market (7.45pm).