Ian Allinson believes a good run in the FA Trophy can recapture all the feelings conjured up during St Albans City's charge to the FA Cup second round - although he admits that promotion remains the ultimate goal.

Saints battling performances in the qualifying rounds of the famous old trophy culminated in two dates beamed live to the British public, the first of them a never-to-be-forgotten win over League Two Forest Green Rovers in front of more than 4,000 fans inside Clarence Park and millions more watching on BBC.

Their Trophy run began with a 4-0 success at Oxford City and it is a fellow National League South side, Braintree Town, who arrive in Hertfordshire for round three on Saturday.

Allinson said: "We want to have a good run in the FA Trophy. We gave the people of St Albans something to cheer and get behind by getting to the second round of the FA Cup and there is no reason why we can’t give the people the same feeling the further we go in the Trophy.

"We can do that and there is a fabulous opportunity to take it further.

"We’ve seen with teams like Hornchurch [winners in May] and Concord [runners-up in the 2020 competition] that some of the National League sides don’t take it as serious as they used to.

"We will but we also have to be careful that we don’t undo all the hard work we’ve done in the league by concentrating too much on cup competitions."

On-loan goalkeeper Coniah Boyce-Clark will be available for the game and he may yet be sticking around for a little while longer, even though Michael Johnson returned from injury in the 3-0 Herts Senior Cup win over Hertford Town.

Allinson said: "We’ve got Coniah until Sunday but we are speaking to Reading about keeping him for another month.

"To have two keepers like Michael and Coniah over the Christmas period is going to be important and hopefully we’ll hear something in the next 24 hours."