APPROACHING the final furlong, and a win followed by a draw have given us renewed hope that we can come through on the rails to avoid the dread of relegation.

We sit four points adrift of Crewe and Notts County, and both are viable targets. Two games ago we were five adrift of Coventry and Crawley. It’s a change for the better.

Down at Gillingham, I was looking forward to seeing a Justin Edinburgh side in the flesh, but it was a bitter disappointment. We were measurably the better footballing side at the Priestfield Stadium where Gillingham’s team of brute force grabbed a painfully late, late equaliser.

We slightly lost our nerve after our second goal, and started to do things that we hadn’t been doing in the preceding 80 minutes.

I have recently come to believe that blatant time-wasting not only adds minutes, but also concedes the psychological battle to the opposition without a fight.

My mind goes back to the home game with Walsall last season when the referee saw Brian Wilson telling a ball boy to hang onto the ball after it had rolled out of play in front of the West Stand and we conceded an equaliser in the resultant excessive time added.

As with all things it is a question of balance. On Saturday, we were penalised for nothing when trying to run down the clock near the corner flag in the last minute. One thing we cannot rely on is referees who don’t make things up as they go along.

The availability of two players will be absolutely vital in the run in: Bongani Khumalo and Sammie Szmodics. Bhongani has a definite presence about him that comes from his strength of personality. He feels like more of a fixture than our previous hired gun, Kaspars Gorkks, ever was, and he expresses himself brilliantly on and off the pitch.

As for Sammie, no one works as hard to make the sometimes thankless front runner role more viable. Against Gillingham it seemed that the players had taken it upon themselves to give Chris Porter support and a fighting chance, so that he wasn’t hung out to dry as Rhys Healey had been against Yeovil.

As result of more support, Porter looked like the player we need him to be, with more spring in his jump and a rejuvenation in his game compared to his previous appearance at Rochdale.

The saddest story for me this week was the departure of Shaun Derry and Greg Abbott from Notts County. Twelve or even six months ago it would have been unthinkable.

But the pressures appear to have got to Derry, and he looked a diminished man when he spoke to the press after the last defeat at MK Dons. Once stress conveys itself to players the team suffers, so maybe the decision was right for man and club.

The strangest story comes from Good Friday’s opponents Port Vale. A small number of their fans received an email apparently from their chairman, Norman Smurthwaite.

The email stated that funding would be stopped in April, and that the club was being made available for sale. Smurthwaite has since said that his email account was hacked and he didn’t send the email, and there is little reason at all to disbelieve this, other than natural suspicion.

The Vale manager is out of contract in the summer along with the majority of the squad, so these are uncertain days for the Vale. This story is from Wednesday’s Stoke Sentinel.

What am I doing reading the Stoke Sentinel? Well, normally I am good at arranging my work commitments around Colchester United’s away games.

It didn’t go to plan this week, working at the Britannia Stadium in Stoke, and writing this in Etruria, two miles from Vale Park, a week too early! Heigh-ho, back to the drawing board. Signing off, the last man standing.