Hurst happy with Grimsby Town's display at Winterton

TWO friendlies in and Grimsby Town's players all have "big ticks next to their names" – now that needs to continue.

The Mariners' preparations for the upcoming season clicked up a gear at Winterton Rangers last night, with an encouraging 5-0 victory.

Goals from Lenell John-Lewis, Liam Hearn, Dayle Southwell and Joe Colbeck – along with an own goal – rewarded a dominant display against Northern Counties East League Premier Division opposition.

And joint boss Paul Hurst was satisfied with what we saw from the dug-out.

"It looked a big improvement from Tuesday," he told the Telegraph. "It's hard for us to judge whether the opposition weren't quite as good or not, but that's not for me to say.

"The difference from the Cleethorpes Town game was that we got a lot more penetration higher up the pitch, rather than keeping it in areas where we weren't really hurting the opposition.

"We've just started to drip-feed some of the ideas and bits of play that we'd like to see, and we saw that last night.

"We're not going too carried away, and I don't mean that to be disrespectful to Winterton because they provided us with a physical test and a nice pitch to play on. But we know there are going to be much stronger tests.

"We're seeing what we're asking from the players – they're working hard in really hot conditions and they're passing the ball around.

"It's all about giving the lads confidence and building up pictures and ideas of where to move the ball.

"We have got a lot of good footballers. That alone won't get us to where we want to be, but they've got good attitudes about them and at the moment they've all got a tick next to their name.

"Now we want that to continue."

Although Town didn't pick up any injuries from the friendly itself, Andi Thanoj and Scott Neilson were absent due to minor niggles.