AHEAD of this weekend’s derby crunch clash with Silsden, Eccleshill are buoyant and ready to continue their fantastic run of form.

Going into the fixture, Eccleshill are coming off the back of four league wins on the bounce, which saw them accumulate a total of 15 goals in the process.

The confidence is flowing, the momentum is growing and manager Lee Elam believes the squad bond is too.

“We’ve been in a great vein of form, but I believe losing to Bottesford Town around four weeks ago has been the turning point in our season.

"Our standards dropped that day and we were well beaten by an okay team. We woke up from that and we spoke about needing to pick our performances up.

"And from then, we've kicked on and are finding form at the right time."

Elam added: "The attitude, commitment and desire from the players have improved too, and it's pleasing that it has come at this time.

"If I hadn't seen this improvement, then I may have been worried. But we've built a good group now and I was hoping it was just a matter of time before we saw it click into place.

"We are also now getting results, our performances are really good and the bond is getting stronger and stronger between the players."

"We have a really good group of 17 or so players and all of them will fight for each other, and we'll need that to continue in the next 12 games."

Despite his squad showing a real sign of togetherness and quality, looking ahead, Elam feels he may need to be cautious in some aspects of his management.

He said: "To keep this momentum and togetherness between the squad will be extremely important.

"I will have to be very careful with the squad players, with how I utilise them. We've got a good squad of 17 players, so we will definitely need to give a bit of rotation to the squad.

"Everyone deserves to have a go in the team, it's not just the 11 that is picked on a matchday. A lot of the players are doing really well and making an impact when they come in to the side or from the bench.

"So, I need to give these players their fare share of minutes."

Eccleshill do face off with local rivals Silsden on Saturday (today), and looking ahead to the fixture, Elam is expecting no easy task.

He said: "It's going to be a very tough fixture and I think they'll be really fired up now to take us on.

"I think Danny (Forrest) will have them well prepared because I believe the word is getting out about how we play and do things.

"So, I'm expecting them to try and stop us from playing and to make it really difficult for us.

"Hopefully we can get one over on them because it's nice beating a rival."