MARTIN Paul believes Hednesford Town's forthcoming FA Trophy final appearance could give his side the advantage in tomorrow's crucial Dr Martens League Premier Division encounter.

The Midlands side have beaten the odds to reach the final against Canvey Island at Villa Park on May 23, but Bluebirds striker Paul is hoping they will already have one eye on that when his side travel there tomorrow.

Defeats on Easter Monday have left both Chippenham and Hednesford in a precarious position at the bottom of the table and Paul is urging his team-mates to put tomorrow's opponents under pressure.

He said: "They have done extraordinarily well to reach the final of the Trophy, better than anyone expected, definitely considering their league form.

"I think a lot of their players will be thinking about the final and hopefully we can catch them off guard.

"They will be trying to protect themselves and certainly won't want to risk missing the chance to run out at Villa Park.

"Maybe they will look at their position in the league and think they have already blown their chance of reaching the play-offs and just concentrate on the final."

Paul is still trying to recover from Monday's 6-1 humiliation.

He said: "I am quite astounded by what happened and have never played in a game like that before in my career.

"It will sound remarkable but I think we had the better of the first half but they had four chances and scored them all.

"It was all down to individual errors and at the end of the match the Dorchester players have come up to us and told us that is the hardest match they have had since Christmas."

The former Bath City striker was only denied from getting on the scoresheet by some inspired goalkeeping from Dorchester's Craig Bradshaw.

"I had more chances in that game than I have in all the games since my recall combined," he said.

"Someone once said it was a funny old game but it's worse than that; it is amazing. There is no way they deserved to beat us by five goals but you have to give them credit as they took their chances."

Trailing 4-0 at the break Chippenham came out all guns blazing after the restart. They threw four players upfront while just leaving two players at the back as they chased the impossible.

Paul believes that although this resulted in a further two goals it was the right approach.

He said: "There are two schools of thought when you are that far behind. You either play for pride and just try to win the second half or you throw everything at it. We went for it and at the start they had a bit of wobble. For a moment every one thought maybe there was a chance we could get it back but then we gave another two goals.

"We now have to aim at winning our last three games. If we pick up nine points then we know we have reached the play-offs and anything else would be a bonus although automatic promotion now looks unlikely."