From relegation fodder to one of the form teams. But Eastbourne Borough are not safe yet...

Currently one of the form teams of National South, with just one defeat in the past nine games, the Sports notched a resounding 3-0 victory over visitors Chippenham Town. This week, they face their final two games – at Weston super Mare on Tuesday and Braintree Town on Saturday – and they must win at least one.

Borough got off to a blitz of a start, Sam Beard scoring within 75 seconds – without Chippenham getting a proper touch of the ball. The lead was doubled on the half-hour with a towering Moussa Diarra header from a corner – a move rehearsed to perfection in Adam Murray’s Friday training session. And the victory was capped off ten minutes from time when Yahya Bamba rounded off an incisive run by man-of-the-match Finn Ballard McBride.

Eastbourne Borough v Chippenham in 55 pictures by Lydia and Nick Redman.

The young Aussie, signed in January, has moved from fringe striker to pivotal player, and on Saturday he was unplayable: a seamless combination of power, pace and close control.

But this was a true team performance. Murray has a style and a formula, and the players are buying into it. They work phenomenally hard, they trust each other, they defend sensibly and they attack adventurously.

One of Saturday’s best moves did not actually produce a goal – Ballard McBride’s first half blazing run from halfway producing a desperate smothering save – but it began with some lightning instinctive first-time passing, almost too quick for a spectator’s eye to follow. It’s the new normal, from the Premier League downwards.

The coaching maxims used to be: “look ahead – know what you’ll do with the ball before you receive it!” Sound advice, but now there is an added dash of freedom: “Play one-touch: pass to the nearest free player, and see what happens…”. It’s daring and edgy but it creates breathtaking forward moves.

A sunny Priory Lane, in front of a buoyant 1,600-plus home crowd, had formed the perfect theatre for this confident and fast-paced performance. But where next? Weston-super-Mare on a damp Tuesday night is a different proposition.

A small matter of a 400-mile round trip can be managed: indeed the Borough squad and their staff have grown pretty used to these long hauls. But of the 1,600 buoyant Borough followers, only a couple of dozen will slip away from work early enough to make it to the Woodspring Stadium. Weston’s pitch will play slower and less true than the immaculate surface which has underpinned Murray’s preferred style of swift attacking moves.

No matter. A large part of the Murray turnaround has been about positive belief, throughout the team, that they can play at high pace, take the game to the opposition, even take calculated risks. And they’ll mix it with some steady game management when they need to.

Very different from the risk-averse, self-doubting mentality which had crept into the squad before Christmas. In fairness Mark Beard, Adam’s predecessor, had planted some of these green shoots, but he was working with a totally new, largely inexperienced set of players.

The current positive mood in the squad is actually quite close to a Danny Bloor team: closely bonded, focused, playing for each other, no passengers. At exactly this time last season Bloor’s Sports were one win away from the play-offs – but heck, at least Borough seasons don’t finish in meaningless mid-table.

There are literally too many permutations to be able to predict the final placings. We have thrown the fixtures and data into our Herald results calculation predictor, but it’s as reliable as trying to count the number of socks in a churning tumble dryer.

If Borough were to lose both of their remaining games, they would certainly be in serious trouble. If they can bag three points at Weston they are almost certainly safe – and they’ll take a relaxed drive to deepest Braintree on Saturday. And if they win both, they’ll be booking one of those luxury Norwegian Cruises into a blissful summer sunset…