BEN Stevenson has praised the role Hayden Mullins and Paul Tisdale have played in helping Colchester United secure their League Two status.

The U’s finally sealed their Football League place for another season thanks to a 1-0 triumph over Salford City, on Saturday.

Mullins, who has been assisted by Tisdale, took interim charge at the end of March with Colchester having won only one of their last 25 matches, prior to that.

The U’s have taken 11 points out of a possible 21 since then to move clear of relegation and midfielder Stevenson says the pair have had a positive influence.

Stevenson said: “They’ve done really well and they’ve kept us calm, in the situations that we’ve been in.

“They’ve got us back to where we needed to be and we’ve got important results when we’ve needed to.

“More than ever, we’ve needed to stick together and we definitely have done that.

“We’ve not been down in the dumps; we’ve been waiting for the next game and trained hard, in order to try and get the results we’ve needed.”

Stevenson made his first Colchester start since March 27 against Salford, helping them claim victory.

The former Coventry City playmaker provided the assist for substitute Josh Bohui to score the U’s second-half winner.

“It was a massive three points to get us over the line,” said Stevenson, who has made 97 league and cup appearances for Colchester.

“We didn’t want it to go down to the final day; we wanted to get our jobs done and I think the boys to a man were professional about it and deserved the win.

“I know they went down to ten men but sometimes it’s hard to break teams down when that happens.

“It doesn’t leave as much space because they sort of bank it off but we kept moving it and didn’t get too frustrated.

“We created an opportunity to score and obviously took it.

“We just kept going and thankfully, we got the goal that we needed.

“If you keep being patient and moving the ball, the space will open up if you pick the pass at the right time.

“Mike (Folivi) has done well to let the ball go through his legs and it was a really good finish from Josh (Bohui).

“Mike has probably made my assist better than it was but it’s something that I want to add to my game – goals and assists.

“I’ve not got anywhere near where I wanted with that but it’s always nice to get an assist.

“We didn’t want to just go through the motions – we wanted to be professional about it and get more points on the board and try to finish the season strongly.

“We worked out how to stop their threats and it worked well.

“We didn’t concede hardly any opportunities to them and I thought our game plan worked well.”