NATHAN McDonald insists Braintree Town have the ideal man at the helm to engineer a strong finish to the Iron’s Vanarama National League South campaign.

Despite not seeing action at Weston-Super-Mare due to the wintery weather last weekend, Braintree will head into Saturday’s home game against Wealdstone in confident mood after their win against Poole Town last time out.

It was an important result as it put a lid on a six-game winless run that had seen the Iron slip out of the National League South play-off places and pushed them back up into the top seven.

Having been joint top before Christmas, their form in much of 2018 has been less than convincing, but they know a strong finish to the campaign should see them stay in the promotion race.

And goalkeeper McDonald feels manager Brad Quinton is the perfect man to guide them through a testing run-in having witnessed first-hand how he did it while working under his boss at Enfield Town in the last three years.

McDonald said Quinton ensured his team kept pressing until the final kick of the season, despite having a similar post-Christmas dip in form, and he is backing him to do the same now he is in the Braintree hotseat.

“In the last three years at Enfield, every year we had a strong finish under Brad,” said McDonald.

“I’m hoping that that run is carried on here.

“That’s what pushed us into the play-offs there last year.

“Just after Christmas time we had a dip, the same as here, but we kicked on after it and we made it in there.

“Hopefully Brad can get us doing the same again here.”

McDonald acknowledges some may have written off the Iron’s play-off hopes after they had lost members of the squad, including centre-half Joe Ellul and top scorer Phil Roberts, since Christmas.

However, the keeper has belief that Quinton has what it takes to get his team over the line as he did when the pair were working together at Enfield.

“People have been writing us off because of people leaving,” said McDonald.

“They’ve been saying that we’ll go downhill, but I’m sure we will come good.

“Brad says to us that he will make it happen and I believe that he will make it happen.

“I have been with him a lot of years and I personally have belief in it.

“It’s going to take good team spirit to get us over the line and we have that.

“Look at the Poole game, it wasn’t the best of games but everyone stuck together and ground the result out.

“The team coming together is all it will take.”