Saturday’s gone, over, out of the way and (hopefully) behind us, writes Walsall blogger Mark Jones.

A wise man once said that you don’t get many doubles in a season and as we’d already picked up two wins over Northampton this year, a third was always going to be a tough ask.

You could sense it was going to be ‘one of those days’ by the way we went behind.

Lee Holmes stormed through a gaping hole in the opposing defence, probably should have gone on himself and shot, we lost possession, a long punt upfield that 99 times out of 100 Ropes would have dealt with, one clever lob later and we’re a goal down.

To give Northants some credit, they’ve moved up a level since those cup ties in December.

They got among us, were tough, mobile, moved the ball quite well and, on reflection, probably just about deserved the three points.

Saturday’s result also probably just about puts us out of the running for the automatic promotion place that some people were still talking about at the weekend.

Saturday’s performance shows that we’ve still got plenty to do to achieve a play-off place, fortunately Saturday’s league table also shows we’re still in there fighting.

We should now adopt the same approach to the last eleven games as we did to the last eleven minutes on Saturday.

Scrapping, battling and generally refusing to take defeat lying down.

Unsurprisingly this was epitomised by Tommy Mooney who, despite having missed a couple of sitters, kept going and worked the keeper a couple of times – a real inspiration.

Equally encouraging was the performance off the bench of Walsall boy Richard Taundry, more of the same for the rest of the season please.

At the end of each half there were a few boos ringing out and no doubt there’ll be some moaning and whinging from certain posters on the message boards but you won’t get any of that nonsense from me.

Sure I was disappointed by Saturday’s outcome and certain aspects of the way we played and I thought three or four of the team played well below their best.

But I’ve sat through enough dross in recent years from players who couldn’t care less about the shirt they were wearing to refrain from slagging off a Walsall team who do put in the effort even when things are not going for them.

Fifth place with eleven games to go, there should be a few more twists and turns before May. 

Down but definitely not out, bring on Brighton.

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