'We haven't given up hope with these players - hopefully the crowd will stick with us' - Ian Baird believes Hawks will get things right after slumping to Dartford defeat

But the Hawks' number two Baird retains the belief in the current crop of players at the club can still deliver a play-off finish this term.

Hawks set an unwanted record of the most home league matches without victory in the club’s history having now gone nine fixtures without a Westleigh Park triumph following a 1-0 defeat to high-flying Dartford.

It also stretched their current run without a NLS win to eight matches as they remain eight points off the play-off positions in 12th spot.

Baird, who worked under Doswell at Sutton before joining him at Westleigh Park following his appointment in the summer of 2019, conceded results have not been good enough of late as the campaign threatens to get away from them if they cannot turnaround an alarming run.

But the Hawks assistant boss insists both he and boss Doswell have not 'given up hope' in the squad - and he is hoping the fans stick with the team with 16 games still to play this season.

Baird said: ‘We are up against it, we've had a bad, bad run of results - the worst probably me and Dos (Paul Doswell) can ever remember - I don't think we've ever had that.

‘It's certainly not good (record run without a home league win), but we haven't given up hope with these players and hopefully the crowd will stick with us.

'There's a long, long way to go - there's still 16 games to go. If you look at our results, they've been the odd goal, odd poor performance but we know in that dressing room there's still plenty there to get us where we need to be. It's always been the goal this season to get into the play-offs.’