AS THE season nears its end, Paul Braithwaite recognises that for the majority of teams, there are no tangible rewards left to play for.

But the Wootton Bassett Town manager has thrown down the gauntlet to his players and challenged them to maintain their standards right through to the final minute of the campaign.

Bassett are currently unbeaten in six outings in the Hellenic League Premier Division and Braithwaite’s men get to grips with two of their four remaining matches out of the way this Easter weekend when they host Oxford City Nomads tomorrow and Brimscombe & Thrupp on Easter Monday (kick-off 3pm).

Bassett are at home for all of their remaining games and Braithwaite insists that he won’t allow his team to be content with going through the motions.

“I’ve spoken to a few players from other teams that we’ve played recently and they’ve said: ‘we started off well but then we lost a couple of games and people can’t be bothered any more’,” he said.

“A few weeks ago when we played Reading, I said to the players that the target was to go three games unbeaten. Then we went four games unbeaten, five games unbeaten and then six games unbeaten.

“We’ve got to set our own standard. We don’t want to just finish in the lower-mid reaches of the league – we want to try and finish as high as we can.

“I think that it’s important we do that. We also brought in Jack Ellis from Shrivenham recently and that extra competition for places lets players know that they can’t just dwell on things because it’s the end of the season.”

Braithwaite added: “It is good that the rest of our games are at home and we don’t have to travel but everyone has to go to everyone and the other side of the coin is that we’ve already done the travelling.”

Elsewhere, John Fisher’s Highworth Town set about making up the deficit of league games caused by their historic FA Vase run with two games over Easter.

They host Holyport on Saturday before making the short trip to Barrington Park for a local derby against Michael McNally’s Shrivenham on Monday (kick-off 3pm).