MANAGER Garry Flitcroft has urged Chorley to use their Lancashire FA Trophy success as the catalyst to push them into the Conference North play-offs.

The Magpies won the competition for a record 16th time courtesy of a 3-0 win over neighbouring Clitheroe at Bolton Wanderers’ Macron Stadium on Monday night.

They went into the game having won just once in their previous eight league outings to scupper their top five challenge.

But Flitcroft hopes that being crowned the non-league cream of Lancashire will help them get back on track in their bid for back-to-back promotions, and they can use their three games in hand over fifth placed Hednesford Town to bridge the four-point gap.

“The lads were bouncing in the dressing room, so hopefully we can take that into the next league game,” said the Chorley boss, whose side were 3-0 up at half-time against the Blues with goals from captain Andrew Teague, who had returned from suspension, and Chris Almond either side of a James Dean penalty.

“We’ve got another big game against Stockport on Saturday.

“We’ve not given up on going up this season.

“We’ve drawn four out of the last six games. We haven’t lost many but we’ve drawn too many.

“We haven’t been clinical enough. You need to take your chances when they come along, and we did that on Monday.”

The only disappointment for Flitcroft was that they did not win by a greater margin.

“I said at half-time, when you’re 3-0 up at that stage you should be looking to score five or six,” he said.

“All credit to Clitheroe, they started the second half well and kept on attacking us, and in fairness to them they dug it. We let them in a bit too easily.

“But overall it was a great result for us.

“We said if we score early it will be important and we scored goals at good times and we carried on dominating.

“You want to win as many trophies as you can and this is an important competition with a lot of pride at stake.

“It was a fantastic night.”