LUKE Williams insists the opportunity to achieve League One survival remains in the hands of his Swindon Town squad - if they choose to grasp it.

Head coach Williams sought to clarify his comments from last week’s gut-wrenching 2-1 defeat at Bradford City after which he suggested the thought of battling to retain the one-goal lead earned by Nicky Ajose’s opener at Valley Parade “was too big for us.’’

The Bantams scored two late goals to leave Town seven points adrift of safety and Williams caused consternation among some supporters by observing: “The players are desperate to concede to not have to live with the fact that they came away and won at Bradford, so it’s easier to say we got beat.”

Using his pre-match press call ahead of today’s home meeting with Millwall (1.30pm) to expand on those thoughts, Williams reiterated his belief that salvation is possible if his players can overcome the mental errors that have reared their heads too often this season.

“The point I am trying to make is in life, often when human beings get close to achieving a goal, they sabotage it because it is hard to see things through at times and live up to expectation,’’ said Williams.

“It felt to me that it was one too many times when we have done something very good and then pressed the self-destruct button.

“I don’t think it’s a conscious thing and I don’t believe it’s literally what I am saying and I do appreciate the opportunity to explain more thoroughly what I meant.

“We had so many opportunities to kill the (Bradford) game off and be high up the pitch and make it very, very difficult for Bradford to take the ball off us. Instead, we chose to make a cross, make a loose pass, turn back into trouble.

“It felt at that time that we had had failed to deliver on some promising work.’’ Players making familiar mistakes has been a recurring theme for Town in a desperately disappointing season, but Williams insists he simply won’t stop attempting to drum the message home to his squad as the season enters its final stretch.

“My attitude is that you never quit, you never give up, so to stop trying to correct it would make me disappointed in myself that I didn’t try to do everything that I possibly could,’’ he added.

“I made a training session to try to exaggerate the point, as I try to do often after a defeat, try to take lessons from something bad to see if we can make something good come from it.

“It’s not an easy process but to not try would be appalling. I hope it’s not too late, I still believe that there is an opportunity for us staring us in the face if we chose to rise to it and accept it.’’

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