COLCHESTER United head coach Hayden Mullins admits Wealdstone presented a different kind of challenge for his side after they played out a 1-1 draw, in their final pre-season friendly.

It looked for a long time as though Noah Chilvers’ seventh-minute strike would give the U’s victory in the behind-closed-doors friendly, at the JobServe Community Stadium.

However, a last-gasp penalty from Josh Umerah secured the National League side a share of the spoils.

Mullins said: “I thought it would be a different kind of challenge and that they would pose a different question to us to what they actually did.

“I thought it would be more along the lines of a League Two kind of game where it would be a little bit quicker with tackles and aggression and a little bit more fight but they slowed the game down quite a bit.

“It was a different kind of game and we had to manage the game in front of us.

“They tried to keep possession at the back to try and lure us out but we were winning the game, so we turned it into an exercise where if we’re winning the game and we take the exercise into a league game if you like, it’s about managing the game.

“We spoke about not getting drawn out of our positions too early and spoke about trying to solve different problems that we faced on the pitch.

“The main thing that’s pleasing for me is that if players know their role, we also look a threat as well once we get it right and we’re nice and compact and in the right areas.

“We got them in at half-time and we sat them down and we spoke and calmed them down a little bit.

“We settled down as a team and we looked a lot more comfortable in the second half and created a lot more chances.”

Colchester were without the likes of Shamal George and Kwame Poku, who are currently self isolating.

The U’s made a number of changes in the second half with several trialists making an appearance, finishing the game with a completely different XI to the one that had started the match.

“A lot of changes do disrupt things and we changed the whole starting XI, in the end,” added Mullins.

“There were a lot of young lads on the pitch and different things get thrown up.

“The different challenges we looked at and how we wanted to try and face them were key in what we wanted to try and get out of the game and hopefully, it’ll get us ready for the game against Carlisle.

“They’re such an honest group and in the first half, they almost want to all go and win the ball back.

“It’s just about speaking to them and getting them to calm down and knowing that we’ve got to do it as a unit.

“It’s good for us to see these problems, try and identify them and see the change which we saw at half-time, which was good.”