GRAHAM Heathcote hopes he has finally found a winning formula after his side made it four games unbeaten on Monday night.

Alty claimed an impressive 1-1 draw with title challengers Rushden and Diamonds to continue their recent revival.

Much of that is down to a change in approach.

The Robins have adopted an adventurous 3-4-3 formation, giving more freedom to their attacking talent without sacrificing defensive stability.

And Heathcote believes the new system could be the base for an improved campaign.

“We’ve got a system which we might be able to work on now and get some reward from,” said the Robins boss.

“The players are focused on the task now and perhaps we are now capable of going on to get results in this league.

“We’ve got players who will cause problems on the break and that’s what we did (against Rushden).

“It’s important to get ball into players’ feet rather than just bang it up there because we’re not going to win that type of ball.

“But when we did get ball into players’ feet we combined quite well against what is usually a solid defence and we caused them a fair few problems.

"We set our stall out well and the players applied themselves, as they have done in quite a few games.

"As I’ve said all along, they’ve not quite got the results their performances deserved and I don’t think they got the result tonight that their performance deserved.

"But let’s be grateful, I suppose, that we got a point from a team that’s looking to be in the play-offs and maybe even win it."

Heathcote isn’t about to get carried away though and admitted there is still plenty for room for improvement, especially with a game against high-flying Ebbsfleet up next on Saturday.

Particularly disappointing for the Alty manager was the manner in which his side conceded against Rushden, allowing Leon Knight to prod home after sloppy defending from a set piece.

He said: “We can be pleased with the performance and I think it says a lot when we’re disappointed with a point at Rushden and Diamonds.

“They never played through us, never cut us open, but obviously they got the ball in the box and they’ve got some powerful headers and that caused us problems. Their goal came from a corner.

“We handled 90 per cent of that type of ball.

“Stuart’s either been impeded or slipped, I don’t know, so he couldn’t come for the actual corner they scored from.

“We had a lot of aerial ball to deal with second half, we didn’t deal with one and it’s cost us.”