I SUPPOSE you could say we were given a wake-up call by Scunthorpe on Saturday.

A 2-0 defeat was obviously disappointing to us all and, believe me, it certainly opened a few of our players' eyes to the tough challenges they are going to be facing this season.

And one of them, of course, will be in tonight's Worthington Cup first round first leg against Second Division Walsall at the Bescot Stadium.

But, going back to the Scunthorpe match, we'd been trying to warn the players during the week that it was going to be the real stuff and what the rest of the games this season are going to be like.

Low key Third Division games are very, very, very difficult and that's exactly how it turned out.

But, I must admit, I did sense that the will to win, which we had for our opening game against Torquay, wasn't quite there.

In many ways, though, I think it was a predictable reaction from the lads.

They have come into the Football League, won their first match quite comfortably, and thought 'what's all the fuss about'?

But, as I say, Scunthorpe gave us that wake-up call which I'm sure was loud enough to alert us to what improvements will be needed in the difficult spate of games we've got coming up.

I think that's the one thing we need really -- a lot of matches to sharpen up the edge and toughness that's required at this level.

After tonight's match at Walsall we've then got Halifax Town at Aggborough on Saturday and then travel to meet Brighton next Monday.

Although the lads will feel tired after those games I'm sure a busy schedule like that will stand them in good stead for the rest of the season.

After Saturday's defeat the players all agreed that it wasn't what Scunthorpe did to us it was that fact that we didn't play to our maximum.

In fact, a lot of the lads held their hands up and said that they just didn't perform on the day.

That was obviously disappointing, but hopefully it will the last game where that kind of thing happens.

But, having said that, it wasn't a case of not putting the effort in, it was more about not having the edge that we had against Torquay when the players were up for it and made sure they didn't lose a challenge. That wasn't quite there at Scunthorpe.

But, make no mistake, our confidence is still sky high. It wasn't that we had to run around after them as we had the ball probably 75 per cent of the time.

But the fact they had ten men for much of the game didn't give us any room to really play in. They went back and defended on the 18 yard line and the pace in our team, which will cause opposition problems, we couldn't use on the day. That's not an excuse, but if certainly affected the way we wanted to play.

The other down side from Saturday was that Paul Webb suffered an ankle injury but he should be fit by the weekend.

With such a busy spell coming up we're not going to do a lot of training this week. We'll keep it down to a minimum and keep things ticking over.

By the way, I was pleased with the support that we got at Scunthorpe on Saturday. They were very good, backing us to the last minute and clapping the lads at the end of the match.

Hopefully, we'll soon be giving them another victory to cheer, but let's be honest defeats are going to be part of the season.

I spoke to some people after the match on Saturday who said Scunthorpe were a good team. I said 'were you surprised?'. After all, two games ago they were playing in the Second Division and we were playing in the Nationwide Conference.

So, yes, they are a good team. They had some good players and ones they have played a lot of money for. On the day they made the difference.

JAN MOLBY was talking with CHRIS OLDNALL