POOLE Town showed “resilience” and “determination” to grind out a goalless draw with Chesham United according to manager Tom Killick.

The result put an end to three straight defeats at home for the Dolphins, with the clean sheet in contrast to the 10 goals they have conceded during that run.

A game devoid of attacking quality, neither side truly threatened beyond ambitious long shots and set-pieces.

Speaking to the Daily Echo, Killick said: “What we talked about is when we don’t play well, when we don’t create chances – what we’ve got to do is be resilient and try and get something from games when we are not at our best.

“That’s what we failed to do – when we’ve not been at our best, not only have we been beaten, we’ve been beaten comprehensively at times.

“Against Chesham, our overwhelming objective first and foremost was to be much harder to break down. I think we achieved that.

“Yes, people would argue that it was to a detriment of our attacking play, but I think you’ve got to give yourself a base.

“We feel we can do better going forward but we felt we had to get back to some form of resilience, determination to protect our goal, determination to stop the other team from creating chances.”

Poole themselves were relatively toothless, with top goalscorer Tony Lee rarely receiving any service.

Despite Chesham being reduced to 10 men with five minutes to go when centre-half Eoin Casey received a second yellow for raking his studs down Josh Carmichael’s shin, Dolphins could not take advantage and failed to threaten the Chesham goal.

Killick added: “Again, people will argue that we didn’t do an awful lot, but it is an improvement on what we’ve been doing in terms of our resilience and our effectiveness in terms of reducing other team’s potency. That was a good step in the right direction.

“I felt we did that against a very good side in Chesham. It wasn’t a very good game, but you could see Chesham had good attacking players, powerful in midfield areas, a lot of pace on the pitch, and we limited them to long range shots.

“Other than that, they didn’t create an awful lot in the second half, in the first half they didn’t create anything much at all.”

The draw leaves Dolphins seventh in Southern Premier South, with 28 points from 19 league games.

Dolphins: Scott, Dickson, Jackson, Spetch, Whisken, Carmichael, Moore, Holmes (Rose, 68), Davey, Burbidge (Chipangura, 75), Lee.

Unused: Wright, Genesini, Wickham.