LEE Sculpher has made a return to the North West Counties First Division after signing for Great Harwood Town.

The former Clitheroe manager, who won promotion with the Blues last season before quitting as boss in November, is hoping to boost the Robins' back line as they seek to lift themselves off the foot of the table.

"I've known Lee and he's said he would be available for a few games," said Town manager Dave Sharples.

"He's been keeping himself fit since he left Clitheroe by playing local football and we'll just see what happens."

Now Sharples wants the side as a whole to build on last week's performance when they were unlucky to lose 3-2 at leaders Fleetwood after coming back from two goals down.

"It was an encouraging performance last week to say we hadn't played for a month and going into the lion's den against a team that's top of the league," he said.

"The lads had obviously looked after themselves over Christmas and they showed a lot of character to come back from two goals behind.

"Formby's third goal was two yards offside, which the linesman didn't give and that's disappointing for us. Their manager, Tony Greenwood, agreed it was offside but that's how things go for you when you're down at the bottom."

And Sharples hopes the determination and reslience they showed last week will spill over into tomorrow's crunch match at home to second bottom Formby.

Formby are 11 points in front of Great Harwood but the Robins have seven games in hand, and they will be gunning to make up some valuable ground on their fellow Division One strugglers.

"A point would suit them a lot better than us. We need to win," said Sharples, who has not ruled out the possibility of overtaking Formby in the league.

But he stressed: "Our first target is to catch them and then look at it from there.

"If I didn't feel we could close the gap there wouldn't be much point to the job.

"It's not like we're getting turned over every week. We're just losing by the odd goal, so we just have to keep going and working hard."