WINCHESTER City's Sydenhams Wessex League meeting with Portland United tonight will be the eighth game in 20 strength-sapping days for the FA Vase finalists.

Yet manager Neil Hards hasn't heard a whimper of complaint from his tired troops as they home in on four pieces of silverware in the Vase, league, Russell Cotes and Sydenhams Wessex League Cups.

He said: "As always, the attitude of the players is first class. In fact most of them come up to me saying they want to play but sometimes it's a case of the mind being willing but the body being unable to do it.

"They play okay for an hour or so but then start to slow up. It's human nature - it's their bodies telling them they're tired."

With tonight's match kicking off another gruelling run of three games in five days, Hards will have to keep ringing the changes over Easter.

He anticipates that eight of tonight's starting line-up will be different to the team that pipped Christchurch by an Ian Mancey goal on Tuesday.

Kieron Hall, Stewart Lang and Steve Waite are all available again and Gary Green comes back into contention after being rested against the Priory.

It's unlikely that either Mancey or his frontline sidekick Andy Forbes will play tonight. Instead Hards will give a start to new signing Jamie Laidlaw from Chichester, who made his debut as a substitute on Tuesday.

Hards is appalled by the backlog of fixtures his team are expected to trawl through before the league season ends on April 24.

He said: "The amount of games we've played in the last few weeks is ludicrous.

"You'd have thought there'd be a bit of leniency, but we haven't had an ounce of help from the league. If we're going to win the Wessex title, we're going to have to do it the hard way.

"People keep throwing obstacles in our path, but we'll climb over them and plod on."