What a week for the lads!

The star Latics player writes every week for Chron Sport

IT HAS been an honour to be team captain for the last two games.

I thought I might have a chance before the Bury game, with Cliff Byrne and James Wesolowski out through injury. When the news came I was actually quite nervous: it suddenly hit home how much it means.

Being skipper has coincided with two victories in a short space of time — in front of the two best atmospheres from Athletic supporters all season outside the Cup.

Bury was a real derby. There was no quarter from either team, but our fitness and tactical substitutions made the difference.

We were able to make two positive changes — Kirk Millar and Matt Smith; while they were forced into injury changes.

If that was a good result, the Yeovil game was even better: We felt beforehand we could get at them at set pieces with our extra height and that their defenders would be in trouble if we could get them running back towards their own goal.

The plan worked perfectly in the first half. Yeovil came back after a half-time rollicking, but didn't create too many scoring chances. That was partly down to Glenn Belezika, who deserves a special mention.

Close to the final whistle on Tuesday night, I got a booking for getting involved after Kirk had committed a foul. It wasn't a dirty challenge, more one down to Kirk's enthusiasm. Yeovil's players steamed in and I could see the referee was wavering a bit, so I did what I could to take the emphasis away from Kirk. We both ended up with yellow cards for our trouble!

The old cliché that a week is a long time in football has been proven true. Four days is clearly an awfully long time too.

We are not totally safe yet and still need a point to be sure. That's what we are aiming for at Crawley on Saturday — and they’ll be up for the fight.