WE'LL soon know now if our long lay-off from Nationwide League Division Three action will affect us when we visit Exeter City on Saturday.

Three weeks without league action seems like forever and a day, but we've now got to make sure we're fully fo-cused on maintaining our recent improved fortunes.

We'll go into Saturday's game on the back of four Division Three wins on the trot and it's a great pity that we've had this enforced spell without matches.

There's no doubt it does affect things. There was a great excitement in the dressing room and on the terraces after our 3-0 win over Rushden & Diamonds on November 24 and everybody was looking forward to the next match against Luton.

It was being looked on as probably our biggest challenge of the season.

When it was called off, though, it suddenly left us with three weeks without league action and that has to have an effect among supporters and players.

When you have won four games in a row all you want to do is play, play, play. I think we have lost that a little bit, but I hope it won't be too significant when we return to action at Exeter.

It's difficult really to keep the buzz going for three weeks without something new to talk about. Our last win was against Rushden and that seems ages ago, so people aren't still talking about that now.

Everything has gone a little bit dead which is unfortunate because there's nothing like excitement and confidence about the place.

So we've now got the rest of this week to get the players focused and obviously the first 20 to 25 minutes at Exeter on Saturday is going to be very important.

I suppose the one thing that the lay-off has enabled us to do is to clear up one or two little knocks. We've been able to give one or two people a rest for two or three days, although you don't want to completely rest them because you haven't got the games to maintain their fitness.

But I think they will all come out of this break having done enough and having got one or two niggles out of the way.

While on the subject of injuries just a word about Adie Smith who had his groin operation last week.

It went well, he's out of hospital and he's up and about. It's just a case now of gradually getting back to doing some work, but it's too early to start talking about training yet.

It will be a while before he returns to work and realistically it will be ten weeks before he's back in contention for a first team place.