​Hemel Hempstead boss Wilkinson: Injury crisis is my biggest ever challenge

However, there are, very occasionally, exceptions to the rule.

Hemel Hempstead Town are currently enduring what boss Bobby Wilkinson says is an unprecedented run of bad luck when it comes to injuries, which in turn has seen them go from being top of the league and unbeaten after ten games to not having won a league match since.

And for Wilkinson, the scale of those problems, coupled with the form being shown before them, means he’s firmly of the belief that he really can use injuries as the excuse.

“It’s 98 per cent of the reason we’re on such a poor run,” he said.

“When we lost 7-1 to Dorking we had two players in the side that had featured in our last victory, a 1-0 win at Slough Town – who hadn’t lost at home in a year – back in September.

“We’ve not simply become a bad team overnight. The problem is not just the injuries happening in the first place. It’s the fact that the sheer number of them mean that when our best players initially look ready to return, we’re in danger of rushing them back too soon and that then aggravates the injuries further and we lose them again.

“But the alternative has been to play young players who have done really well but who, with the utmost respect to them, aren’t ready for National League South football yet, or at least not in the circumstances in which we’ve had to play them.

“In the first ten games I picked an unchanged side. I haven’t been able to do that at all since then.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it as a manager. You can’t just go out and sign new players to replace those injured because they have to be of the right calibre and even if you do, you can then end up with a surplus once a good number are fit again, let alone the financial implications.

“So we have to ride the storm and accept the challenge. There is still a long way to go this season.”

Wilkinson says he’s not been surprised by the anger directed towards him by a small number of Tudors fans given the drop in form, but that he’s keen to ensure a sense of perspective is kept as well as awareness as to why the team has struggled.

He said: “I’ve almost become a victim of my own success because the start we had was so good that it’s then been more noticeable that the form has nosedived. It was the club’s best ever start to a season.

“The target set for me at the start of this season when I came in was to get a good side that will compete every week and to finish higher than last season. We are certainly likely to do the latter, and when I have my first choice team available we’ve already shown that we will more than compete every week.

“The vast majority of the fans have been brilliant and fully understanding of what’s happening. But you get some who hide behind keyboards with no idea of what’s going on behind the scenes, and look to cause trouble.

“People questioned why Ricardo German was taken off a few weeks ago, well he’d broken his arm. Then someone moaned that Brandon Barzey wasn’t playing – he was on international duty!

“It’s been the same here for the last five or six years. It’s never a very positive place to be when the team isn’t winning and yet we need people behind us and to have awareness of the real reasons -

“The players are behind me – I’ve never lost a dressing room in my career – and they understand what’s happening and I’m proud of the effort they’re putting in.”

Hemel’s last game was a 1-0 county cup success at Hitchin Town last Tuesday, with a free weekend having given a little more time for some players to recover and hopefully be in line for a return when the Tudors host Wilkinson’s former club Weymouth this Saturday.

He said: “The way things are at the moment I can guarantee some people will say ‘oh, it was only Hitchin’, but once again we had half a side for that match and managed to win the game.

"The break will of course be useful to us but even though we should have two or three back and available for selection, they won’t be match fit. There’s no point in rushing players back only for them to break down again.

"This is about trying to compete and stop the rot, then when we’ve got anything like a full strength team again I’m very confident we’ll be winning games again like we did at the start of the season.

"We worked very hard in pre-season to get everyone fit and the result of that was our best ever start. You can’t take that away. People can jump on the bandwagon and join the ‘sack him’ brigade but it doesn’t bother me as I know what I’m up against and what we’ve achieved.

"We’ll get back to that, it’s hard to know when, but we can’t dwell on it.

"I normally like to keep my thoughts low key when it comes to injuries but I had to come out and talk about it as I didn’t feel I had much help.

"When I look around me, am I going to see people who want to stick together or do as they do every year? The chairman supports me massively and continues to. Any decent people in football will see what’s happening – I have people say to me that they look at our line-up and just think ‘where have your players gone?’

"It’s been the most challenging six weeks of my career but it’s a hell of a challenge and one where I’ll enjoy trying to put things right.”