BURNHAM Ramblers gained their first point in two months in the New Year's Day derby against Maldon & Tiptree.
The 1-1 draw at the Wallace Binder Stadium ended Ramblers' seven-game losing streak but still left Bertie Brayley's side bottom of the Ryman North table, 12 points from safety.
Brayley admits his team's performance in the first half of the season – they have won just three of their 27 league games – has put them in trouble but says they know exactly what they have to do to get out of it.
"There's no doubt about it, it hasn't been a great first half of the season," he said. "It has been about building and trying to get players in and trying to get players to try and work together.
"It's a club that has been totally uprooted from the season before, so it's always going to be a tough task, but I think we're getting there as we all know each other now, we all know the situation we're in and it's about pulling together as a team.
"We've had a couple of suspensions to our big players, including our captain, Michael Bell.
"Confidence hasn't been very high because of our position but I've said to them, 'Come on we're men, we can play football'. I've seen in spells over the course of the season how good we can be.
"We've put in good performances against teams like AFC Sudbury and we should have won that but we came away with a 2-1 loss and we felt hard done by.
"I know it's there, it's just about the boys believing and having the confidence to go out there and do what they can do."
Burnham's match on Saturday at home to Waltham Abbey was postponed after the day's heavy rain, denying them a chance to build on the Maldon draw, but Brayley feels this Saturday against table-toppers Harlow Town could be their moment in the season.
"I would have loved to have played Waltham Abbey with the momentum we would have carried from the draw but, unfortunately, that got called off and now it's going to be a tough task for us going to top- of-the-league Harlow on Saturday," he said.
"Anybody on their day can beat anybody in this league. I did say that early on there is a big gap between the top five teams and the rest, but you do get upsets throughout the season and you get the odd result where you think 'Wow, how'd they manage that?' and hopefully that can be us.
"The fact of the matter is we need to get points.
"I think it's very tight, we're only four points off Cray Wanderers [second bottom] so they're catchable and then two or three wins gets us into the pack and we can pull in the other teams around us."
