MANAGER Mark McLean hopes his Halstead Town players can find their touch in front of goal ahead of home games against two of Thurlow Nunn League division one’s hotshot sides this week.

Saturday will see the visit of fourth-placed Swaffham Town to the Milbank Stadium (kick-off 3pm), with third-placed Framlingham Town quickly following on Tuesday (kick-off 7.45pm).

Halstead, whose trip to Little Oakley was postponed because of the weather last weekend, will head into the games with confidence after a 1-0 win against Holland FC in midweek.

It was a solid performance from the Humbugs, but McLean admitted that it should have been a more emphatic scoreline and knows they will have to be sharper in front of goal to make spells of dominance count when the higher-placed side visit.

McLean said: “It should have been more comfortable than it was against Holland and that was the only disappointing thing for me.

“We just aren’t putting games away as we should be.

“I don’t think a four or five-nil scoreline would have been an unfair reflection, but there were some bad misses and that just kept the game alive for Holland.

“They had a spell at the end, which is inevitable if it’s only one-nil and I thought we could have thrown it away. It’s not even the final third where we need to improve - it’s just the final decision-making in front of goal.

“Chances are coming in abundance and we are creating some lovely ones; our build-up play is a joy, but it is just that final decision.

“As a manager, you’d come away from a game like that looking at the positives - a clean sheet, three points and having created plenty of scoring opportunities.

“Some of the play was unbelievable but it should have been much more comfortable.

“Looking at the league table, we’ve lost eight games this season and that’s comparable to sides up in the top five or six but we’ve got a goal difference of plus one.

“Had that goal difference been plus 30, we could be right in the mix and it’s really just that poor decision-making in front of goal that’s been an issue.

“It’s not just one player either, there have been a number who have suffered, but I know we have the lads to do it as they do so much so well. It’s a hard thing to teach and we just have to keep the confidence up and make them realise that they have it in themselves to do it.

“We’ll just keep building them up and hope it clicks. We just keep it positive, make it clear to them that they are seeing the opportunities and when it does click, someone is going to get battered.”

Swaffham have scored 107 goals in the league from 31 games, while Framlingham have found the target 82 times from 27 games and McLean knows his side can get punished if they aren’t being clinical themselves.

Te added: “We have to make sure we get it right in these next two games as they are against sides who will punish us if we don’t.

“They really are clinical and it’s not something that they just turn on and off - they have been consistently firing in goals all season.

“We had a little taste of Swaffham in the game that got abandoned up there so we saw 15 minutes of each other there and we both know what each other have got.

“But we know they will consistently be at that level and we have to get to that as well.

“We aren’t far away; we just need to put the finishing touch to it.

“If we can do that we know we can be closer to the top of the league.

“We always speak to the lads about the last game in our pre-match preparations so we refresh their minds about situations and we give them a mindset that we want them to have.

“Football isn’t rocket science - it is simple and we have to keep it like that.”

McLean said that he expected Adam Hampson to still be sidelined by a knee injury, but he was pleased that Jack Schelvis would return for the visit of Swaffham and he was also pleased to have Cameron Storie back on board after a spell away.

Storie played in the game against Holland and McLean said he was pleased to be able to include the midfielder again.

He added: “We’ve really missed him.

“He is in the military and was posted back to Colchester, but we sent away again and we have hardly seen him this season.

“He then picked up an ankle injury, but did return and scored four goals for the reserves so we were keen to get him back into the first team.

“Cameron is a very good player and having him back is great.

“He put in 70 good minutes against Holland and I hopeful that we’ll see more of him now until the end of the season.”