THE big fear is that the Dorchester defeat will herald an end of season collapse.

That's what everybody has been talking about because that's been our fate in the last two seasons.

However I believe we are better equipped to deal with the run-in than last year when I felt our poor finish actually started quite a few games before it showed up in the results.

We had not been in our best form but had managed to eke out some results before it fell apart.

This season, although we have had back-to-back defeats, the facts are one of those was to champions-elect, Crawley, where many neutrals thought a share of the spoils would have been the fair result. The other at Dorchester was just a rank bad display. We got exactly what we deserved - nothing.

But I believe that was just a blip - that performance has not been symptomatic of our form of late.

The start we made at Dorchester was similar to Weymouth, where after conceding an early goal, we were chasing the game but unlike at Weymouth where at least we came back into it, we just got worse.

I think we missed John Snape's influence, who had a tight hamstring and was on the bench. Players can have impacts in different ways and building a team is not always about putting the best footballers on the pitch.

It's great to have someone that can hit a 40-yard pass but you also need players that can do the gritty, ugly side of the game, and provide leadership and that's what John Snape can bring to the side.

We've got some terrific skill with the likes of Adam Wilde, Pat Lyons, Jai Stanley and Liam McDonald but you need your John Snapes as well.

The balance of the midfield is something we'll need to consider for next season.

But the reason for the defeat at Dorchester was more straightforward. We quite simply just failed to turn up. In recent matches we've had six or seven players that could reasonably stake a claim for being man-of-the-match but at Dorchester we didn't have one.

The characteristics that brought us success prior to Saturday were not there. It just shows you can't afford to come off it for a second.

Someone taped the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester United and Arsenal which we watched on the return coach journey from Dorchester. For all their galaxy of stars, United's success was forged on tremendous work-rate, putting the foot in, tackling and closing down the opposition.

That's been the key to our good performances since New Year too and we need to return to that.

But we must put Saturday's defeat into perspective. It's not the end of the world.

It was only 10 days ago that other managers were phoning me saying never mind Crawley and Weymouth, we had a real chance to sneak the title.

It's easy for other people to say that but the point is the players have done fantastically well and our whole season is not going to collapse on the back of one poor result. They know they didn't do themselves justice but I'm sure we won't get another display like that.

Of course there will be some added pressure ahead of the weekend's game with Chippenham so it's very much keep your heads time. The players know more than anybody that the kind of performance on Saturday is ammunition for the doubters but we've got a five game season to ensure it doesn't finish in the same manner as recent years.

A top three spot is within our grasp and if we achieved that I would consider that an excellent season but to do that we have to be as strong as we have been in our recent good run of results.