STILL SO MUCH WORK TO DO - HOWARTH

NEIL Howarth has refused to accept that Harriers 'have one foot in the final' of the FA Carlsberg Trophy despite today's 2-0 Semi-Final, first-leg victory over Northwich Victoria.

Harriers may have made the perfect start to the Semi-Final with the two-goal victory, but despite the advantage there's still plenty to be done at Victoria Park next Saturday afternoon.

Speaking to harriers.co.uk after this afternoon's match, a pleased Howarth urged calm and caution to avoid anyone getting carried away.

He said: "It was a good performance, it was nice to get two goals but there's still so much work to do and we're not getting carried away thinking we've got one foot in the final because we've not.

"I know Steve Burr and his teams very well and if we went into next week's game with any less than 100% effort and commitment we'd end up with egg on our faces and would be out of the Trophy."

Gavin Hurren scored his fifth goal of the season to open the scoring for the hosts this afternoon, much to the delight of Howarth who praised the youngster's efforts over recent games.

"He's a big player for us at the moment, no matter what level you're playing at, be it the Premiership or the Conference you still need to win your tackles and headers and be as well as being physically and mentally strong," he continued.

"Gavin seems to be showing all of those attributes at this level at the moment."

Putting next weekend's second-leg on the back-burner with Tuesday night's massive Conference game at Oxford United on Tuesday night, Howarth added; "We're still looking at the play-offs; we're not out of those by a long stretch of the imagination yet.

"We're concentrating solely on Oxford now and we need to go there and put in a performance and get some sort of result."