Captain Josh Granite insists that Barrow AFC’s players remain confident despite their poor recent results, as they look to finally get back to winning ways against Eastleigh on Saturday.

The Bluebirds head into the clash against the Spitfires off the back of five straight defeats, which included a couple of second-half collapses at Chorley and Harrogate Town.

Their first difficult run of the campaign has dropped them down to 17th in the National League table, albeit still with healthy buffer between them and the bottom four.

They do also have a good performance to build on, with the latest of those five losses, at Ebbsfleet United on November 3, an extremely unlucky one that came against the run of play.

Granite said: “I think everyone is just looking forward to getting on the pitch again – even though we haven’t won in five, I don’t feel like we’ve been hammered in any of the games.

“We were really poor in the second half at Harrogate, but I don’t feel like there’s no confidence there.

“We perhaps haven’t had the rub of the green and there were some chances that we’ve got to put away, while we’ve got to be better in our own box and at clearing our lines.

“I think if we do those things then we’ll be back on to the run we were on before we went on to this poor run.”

Granite is hoping he’ll be fit to return against Eastleigh and has returned to training this week after an ankle injury forced him to pull out of the Ebbsfleet game during the warm-up.

The 26-year-old admits it has been strange for the squad to have to wait so long to play again, with their current two-week gap coming after almost three months when the fixtures came thick and fast.

Granite said: “The season started quite frantically, with back-to-back Saturday-Tuesday, Saturday-Tuesdays, but we’ve had a bit of time to look back on things, look at where we need to improve.

“We’ve been able to work on that for a solid two weeks of training, without a game to prepare for last weekend.”

On last Friday’s friendly with Barrow’s under-21 team, Granite said: “I think it was a great experience for the young lads - I went into the dressing room afterwards and had a quick chat with them and they actually performed really well.”