AFC TOTTON’S midfield ‘winner’ Liam Gilbert is the Stags’ only doubt for tomorrow’s FA Cup first qualifying round tie at home to Swindon Supermarine.

Gilbert was getting checked out yesterday after taking a poke in the eye in Wednesday’s tetchy 2-1 defeat at North Leigh in the Southern One South & West.

“Everyone else is okay, but it was quite a heated game with lots of incidents and a few naughty challenges,” said manager Steve Riley.

“Liam Gilbert made it 2-1 with a penalty after Nathan Hurst had threaded the ball through to Sherbs (Nathaniel Sherborne) and a lad took him out. They then went down to ten men following a bad challenge on Liam from behind.

“That’s two physical games we’ve had in the space of five days and we’ve had two narrow defeats.

“We were top of the league before that and I don’t know if people are putting in more effort against us.

“We’re a young squad and maybe expectation levels are higher than they should be.

“We’ve got an honest group of lads and we’ve got to make sure we compete at this level.”

Riley expects another tough examination of his young side tomorrow, even though they blew Supermarine away 6-1 in the league in August.

“It’s a dangerous match because they’re going to try and reverse that scoreline,” he warned.

“I just hope our lads all turn up and put the effort and work-rate in.

“We’ve shown that we can pass the ball well in the opposition half and play with a good tempo, but it’s sustaining it. We didn’t do it on Wednesday and we’ve lost to a good passing side on the biggest slope you’ve ever seen. Statistically we deserved something out of the Stratford game last Saturday (a 1-0 defeat), but if I’m honest the North Leigh scoreline was about right. They moved it about well and everyone one looked comfortable whereas, in contrast, we had good possession but our passing and movement wasn’t good enough.”