THREE down, three to go. Mick Tait challenged his Blyth Spartans side to claim six points from successive Blue Square Bet North away trips to Hyde and Gainsborough Trinity.

The Croft Park club are in fine form, and maintained it on Saturday when they took the first of those six points at Hyde.

Tonight they travel to Trinity looking to complete their two-win haul, and exact a semblance of revenge after an untimely defeat to Gainsborough earlier in the season.

“It’ll be a tough game but as I keep saying, every game in this league is tough,” said Tait, who has a full squad to select from. “I don’t see too many bad teams around and the league is certainly stronger than it was last year.

“We’re playing better than we were last season but we’re still having to scrap and fight for every point. That shows you how much the standard is improving all of the time.”

He added: “We’re back on the road, it’s another long trip for us and we’ll need to be at our best.

“They beat us at our place when we didn’t really want the game at the time. It was a re-arranged fixture and neither of us had a game so we played.

“But we’d just had our budget cut following the FA Cup exit and it wasn’t the best time for us to be playing, we were in a bit of a slump. We took it on and got mugged, so we want to make amends for that.

“You look at their squad and they’ve got some very good players. They’re probably in a false position in the table, they’re not doing as well as they should be.

“I said before Saturday’s game that with the two away trips we should be aiming for six points. I thought four would be a nice return from two away games, but I always really wanted six.

“Now we’ve taken three from Hyde on Saturday, we’ve got a head start so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be looking to get another three on Tuesday.”