Having hit the top ten by pulling off two great away wins in the past week, Billericay Town hope to have the home fans singing by moving further up the Ryman League Premier Division charts at New Lodge tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon.

Town host a Basingstoke side managed by former Fulham favourite Ernie Howe and his Billericay counterpart Gary Calder admits: "We owe them one. Our performance in losing 2-0 down there earlier in the season was a disappointing display.

"We made a couple of silly errors and generally didn't do ourselves justice.

Billericay's recent improvement has certainly been a battle over adversity as their first team squad - certainly not one of the biggest even at the best of times - has been hard hit by injury and unavailability.

In fact, the team that won at Hampton on Tuesday was without six players who would normally expect to be in the starting line-up.

Said Calder: "We want to do the business for our fans as we've not got many home games to go now and generally our supporters have been great with their backing."

Calder makes that remark with some reservations as both he and chairman/ chief executive Rod Moore have been targets for personal abuse in a handful of anonymous letters sent to Moore's home.

The chairman said: "As far as I'm concerned the people who write those kind of letters are gutless.

"Both Gary and myself always make ourselves available to talk to fans who want to make any constructive criticisms, but I have no time for people who sent these kind of letters, some of which have been very offensive, and then don't even have the guts to sign them.

"I've shown these letters to sections of our real fans and they're appalled. Our improved League form means that we could finish the season well in the top ten, reached two cup semi-finals, and enjoyed our best ever FA Trophy run before losing to Rushden.

"We've no time for talking about the past at this club now. Billericay Town is moving forward at a rapid pace both on and off the pitch and this kind of sad abuse will cut no ice with Gary or myself."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.