Braintree look back on a truly remarkable season in which they went enticingly close to a play-off spot only to miss out at the end. No one expected the Iron to have such a good season as they one of the most modest clubs in the league, in terms of budget, and were always aiming primarily just to stay up. They have established themselves as a resilient and tough to beat outfit over the previous two seasons under Alan Devonshire and the experienced manager focus on keeping the squad intact ahead of the campaign. There were literally no changes at all in the squad apart from the arrival of keeper, Nick Hamann, who would later establish himself as the regular on goal. The season started pretty predictably and the results were up and down overall. The Iron took off in October with four wins in a row that moved them into the top five but they were not playing that well and had a slump eventually after that. They were mostly sitting comfortably in mid-table with little to note about. The defence was solid and tough to break down as usual while Kenny Davis was controlling things in midfield but generally there was little out of the ordinary happening for the Essex club as they reached the turn of the year. They, then, had to go through a very long hiatus of eight weeks before playing football again as a series of postponements completely disrupted their fixture list. They only resumed action in late February with a draw at Kidderminster and were expected to amble along for the rest of the season. Devonshire was indeed talking of being worried that his team will get dragged down into the relegation battle given that they had to play over 20 games in less than two months until the end of the season with a squad of 16 players. Yet, what followed after that was completely unexpected and really quite amazing. The manager used the challenge of playing so many games in so little time as a real motivation tool, claiming that his players will want to get some revenge on the Conference officials by upsetting the odds and finishing as they can having felt that they were treated badly by them. Wins over strong sides like Cambridge and Forest Green moved them over the 50-point barrier for survival and they still had a lot of games in hand on their rivals with the gap to the top-five spot pretty minimal. The players just embraced the games and kept on digging in some great results, like a 4:0 win at Southport and a quite brilliant 3:2 win at Luton that spoiled the title party of the champions. Yet, what counted against them in the chase of a play-off spot was their failure to beat Gateshead twice in the last month of the season despite being the better side in both games. It was a small margin at the end but the Iron finished sixth and were denied a fairy tale end of a season. They can still be immensely proud of what they have achieved and will take a deserved rest in the coming weeks.
