THEY are at the halfway point of their bid to return to the Premier Division at the first time of asking, and manager Simon Whaley is optimistic his Eagley side can close the gap on the front runners in the second half of the season.

The Eagles suffered relegation from the West Lancashire League’s top flight last term and, with half of their 30 league games now in the record books, sit fourth in the table.

And player-manager Whaley is far from fazed by the 10-point gap between Eagley and this weekend’s hosts, Milnthorpe Corinthians.

“It’s been ‘interesting’ being in Division One this season,” he told The Bolton News. “The biggest and most obvious difference has been that referees have no assistant referees.

“It’s a difficult enough job as it is but when they are relying on someone from each club taking a line it makes it even harder, and they get enough stick as it is.

“But then poor refereeing has cost us points this season, when we played Lytham we felt we had to put a complaint in about the official, who we’ve since learned has had other clubs do the same.

“But on the whole we feel we’re going okay, it’s our own concentration that has cost us more than the refs. We lost our last game at Poulton 4-3, that was a game we felt we should have taken three points, so to come away with none was hard to take.”

Eagley currently head the division’s three local teams, as they are four points ahead of both CMB and Stoneclough, though the former have two games in hand.

Whaley’s side have proved imperious at Eagley Sports Complex, unbeaten and having collected 22 of a possible 24 points on home turf.

With their away form proving something of a disappontment for him so far, Whaley, the club’s leading scorer with 15 this term, is targeting a big improvement – and six more away points from games at Milnthorpe and bottom side Mill Hill St Peters before the end of the year.

“We’ve been very strong at home,” he added.

“We are probably conceding too many goals, I keep stressing it to the lads and I might have to reshuffle things next year because I want my defenders to stop goals, first and foremost.

“We applied ourselves really well at Poulton and I’m sure we’ll apply ourselves when we go to Milnthorpe too. It’s games against the likes of Mill Hill where the lads seem to think they can take their foot off the gas and win just by turning up, and that isn’t the case.

“We’ve got a good team spirit, the first and second teams get together for team outings at least once a month and everyone was in Blackpool for the club’s Christmas do.

“We’re in it together and if we can get six points before the break we’ll look to hit 2018 running and hopefully close that gap.”