Focus is the word as Worthing prepare for National League South play-off D-day

The Rebels host Weston-super-Mare at what will be a bouncing Woodside Road knowing victory will give them a home semi-final play-off.

Anything less than a win is likely to leave Worthing fourth or fifth and needing to play an extra game in order to reach what would then be an away semi-final.

Racine and his squad are calm about the test in front of them, having surged back into the top three with a superb run of five straight wins.

46 Mike Gunn pictures from St Albans v Worthing.

The latest of those successes was a 4-2 win at St Albans last Saturday in which teenager Brad Dolaghan scored for the fourth game in a row. Another youngster, Jack Spong, scored two and Ollie Pearce struck his 39th goal of the season.

Racine said it was not Worthing at their best – but at this stage, results were really all that mattered.

He told us: “At this time of the season things are heavily dependent on results. We weren’t at our best by our own standards – we defended well in patches and attacked well in patches.

"Early in the season you want to get results playing well but now it’s different.

"This has put us into a good position with one game to go and we know what we need to do against Weston on Saturday.

"We need to focus only on ourselves – if we do our job we won’t have to worry about others.

"We’ve not been putting pressure on ourselves. We’ve stuck to our principles and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

Worthing’s recent run has left a four-game winless streak in March a distant memory. And Racine. who’d only just taken over as interim boss when that sequence occurred, revealed he hadn’t been overly concerned at those three defeats and a draw.

"We were still playing really well and scoring goals, so it wasn’t too concerning,” he added.

Ravine praised Dolaghan’s remarkable goal contribution of late – and said Pearce was keen to reach the 40-goal milestone.

Reuben Austin and Nicky Wheeler are the manager’s only two injury worries for Saturday’s huge clash.