MARK HUGHES is confident next season will be a better one after winning two awards at Chelmsford City's player of the year event.
Captain Hughes scooped the top prize – voted for by supporters – and also won the press player of the year, which was chosen and presented by the Essex Chronicle.
The 30-year-old put in a string of consistent performances and was a worthy winner of both prizes.
And although he was pleased with his personal accolades, he says he would have swapped them for a better campaign for the team.
The Clarets finished the campaign 17th in the Conference South, and only secured their survival with a victory in their penultimate game.
And Hughes said: "Personally I'm delighted to get player of the year and the press player of the year, it's a really nice achievement.
"It's been a frustrating season but it's a nice little one to kickstart pre-season and hopefully have a good year next year.
"I would have traded it all day long for the play-offs though, that's what I came here to do, they had been in the play-offs for four of the last five years, but your perspectives change during the season.
"We knew at Christmas we wouldn't get there so we had a new aim and we got there in the end, we got over the line with a game to go.
"I'm sure that won't happen again next year because we've built a decent squad in the last 10 or 15 games and if we get a few new faces in we can have a good season."
Matt Lock was named players' player of the year at the Melbourne Park ceremony, Leon Redwood was young player of the year and Carl Pentney won away player of the season.
All spoke of a want to do better next time around, and Hughes sees a bright future after the way the club finished the campaign under Mark Hawkes and Steve Smith.
Hawkes was appointed manager in November after Dean Holdsworth's disastrous reign, and although there were a couple of blips along the way, there were certainly more ups than downs under the former Heybridge Swifts chief.
And Hughes believes – with a full pre-season – the Clarets can hit the ground running in August.
"There is optimism," he added. "The home form was really good after the gaffer came in.
"We've got to grind out the results against the teams at the bottom, that's where the team spirit comes in and I don't think we had that at the start of the season and that'll get us through next year because we've got that now.
"He can work and get his ideas across for six weeks before we have a league game.
"We've got Matt Brinkley in now, we didn't have a fitness coach under the previous manager and Matt is excellent at what he does, I'm sure we will be fitter.
"Mark and Steve are very personable, they got around the lads in the changing room and in training, they are very positive and they got us on board from the first night they came in which was very important.
"Plus, we went on a really good run, so it was totally forgotten about what had gone on. I'm really looking forward to next year."