Ben Kennedy knows he and his Stevenage team-mates have to bounce back from one of their worst League Two displays of the season to face Grimsby Town at the Lamex Stadium on Saturday.

Such was the disappointment of Boro’s showing in the 2-0 loss at the Northern Gas and Power Stadium that boss Darren Sarll cancelled his players’ day off on Sunday and had them back at the training ground.

Kennedy told the Comet: “Fair play to the gaffer, rightly so we deserved to be in on Sunday.

“It was one of our worst performances of the season and he said if we don’t perform Saturday we’ll be in on Sunday and he stuck to his word.

“We were all poor Saturday, apart from the goalkeeper.

“Everyone knows we were poor, and as a team we were poor, it was one of those bad days.

“Hopefully it’ll be the last of it.”

After two days pulling apart what went wrong at Hartlepool, Stevenage have now set their sights on Saturday’s visitors.

“We came in on the Sunday and Monday and we talked about it to see what’s gone wrong,” said Kennedy.

“From Tuesday onwards the main focus is Grimsby and next Saturday so we have to put Hartlepool behind us and move on and keep moving on forwards rather than backwards and get points on the board.”

With a turnaround in results, Kennedy feels Stevenage can get back to pushing for a play-off place.

“Me as a young player it’s been tough with the amount of games [since Christmas], we will continue working and hopefully we can get better and better and push to the play-offs still.”

Sarll and his backroom staff have worked to boost confidence in the squad this week.

“He’s [Sarll] been telling us what our identity is and how we play, just reminding us of how good we are,” revealed Kennedy.

“We are a pressing team and we saw games in the past how good we can be, how we can play football as people have seen this year compared to other years.

“Showing us videos of how good we can be, it’s a good thing as sometimes you need reminding.

“We have talked about Grimsby, we know we are capable of beating everyone in this league.

“It’s weird as one week we go and play at Portsmouth, a top team who could be a top League One team, and we beat them, but sometimes we’ll go to a lower team and get beat; it’s consistenty, doing what we are good at week in, week out.”