By Tony Leighton
Stockport County's record-breaking run of nine victories without conceding a goal has not only given Jim Gannon's team a great chance of promotion but also represents a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the Coca-Cola League 2 club.
After avoiding relegation to the Conference by just one place and three points last season, the Hatters are flying high and homing in on the automatic promotion places thanks to their tremendous form since January.
It's a far happier state of affairs than when Gannon took over as manager 12 months earlier - Stockport were five points adrift at the bottom of The League and looked certainties for the dreaded drop.
"We did really well to stay up," says Gannon, "but then we had a difficult start to this season because we lost a number of players and couldn't attract new ones of the calibre I was looking for.
"That meant working with our young players, and although they made good progress we still weren't strong enough as a team. But that changed when we were able to bring players in during January, and since then we've gone from strength to strength."
One of the players brought in was goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey, signed on loan from Wolves but with no first team appearances to his name. Gannon gave the 20 year-old his League debut on January 13th and the rest, as they say, is history.
Hennessey's first nine appearances have been in the games that have seen Stockport break Preston North End's 119-year record of eight successive victories without conceding a goal - and in the process the Hatters have put themselves within two points of the automatic promotion places.
"Wayne has got everything in his game to be a huge success," says Gannon. "He's got the perfect build for the modern-day goalkeeper and he's got the temperament to go with it - nothing seems to trouble him.
"He's been excellent during our great run, but so have the rest of the team - in fact they were awesome in our 3-0 win against Swindon last Saturday. To beat a team so high in the table so convincingly is quite something, and it was a great performance.
"We've got to keep that sort of form going if we're going to end up with promotion, but if the team keeps developing and improving like it has over these last couple of months then the last two months of the season are going to be very exciting.
"They say that form is temporary but class is permanent. Well, we're bang in form and galloping along, but it's not just form - this team is maturing to the point where I believe they're destined for great things over the next two or three years."