YORK City boss Gary Mills has told anybody thinking the fight for National League survival is over to get a grip on reality.

The Minstermen are now six points adrift of a place outside the relegation zone after a 1-1 draw at Boreham Wood.

But Mills’ second-bottom team will halve that gap and climb another position in the table if they win their game in hand against Gateshead at Bootham Crescent on Tuesday night.

Avoiding all fatalistic thoughts, a grounded Mills said: “People keep telling me we need to win each game, but we’re not at that stage yet. We need to keep picking up points, but it’s not realistic for people to think it’s all over, because we haven’t beaten Boreham Wood.

“They’re doing well and it’s not an easy place to come for a lot of reasons. It’s a challenge you have to meet and any manager in any league will say a point away from home is not a bad result.

“We’ve got to now go and get a result against Gateshead and, although, it won’t be good for the heart, if it all comes down to us getting a 91st-minute winner against Forest Green on April 29 to stay up then that’s all that matters and we’ve got to make sure we are in a position so that can happen.”

In a similar story to the home match with Maidstone seven days earlier, the Minstermen forged into an early lead through Amari Morgan-Smith’s seventh-minute opener but, after more chances went begging, allowed their opponents to secure a share of the spoils courtesy of Morgan Ferrier’s equaliser following a goalkeeping blunder by Kyle Letheren just before the half-hour mark.

Summarising the performance, the City boss added: “We started well for the third game running and could have been 3-0 up after 15 minutes when Simon Heslop and Sean Newton both got in through midfield, but we didn’t take our chances to kill the game off again and it ended up 1-1 instead. Their goal was also a really poor and disappointing one to concede.

“We were too spread out as a back four when the ball was played through the middle with Pars (Dan Parslow) out of position and, when the ball came into the box, Kyle didn’t deal with it. Nobody then reacted when the ball dropped to their man and it ended up in the back of our net.

“That gave them a lift and they then had two or three chances in the second half and so did we. It was a fair result in the end, but could have been different if we had been more ruthless again in the first quarter.

“There’s also a thin dividing line at the moment. Vadaine (Oliver) had a goal wrongly disallowed in our last game and there was maybe an inch difference between Jon Parkin putting us 2-1 up in this match when he hit the bar.

“Things aren’t quite going for us, because that would be a difference of four points, which would be massive for us, but we’ll keep plugging away and stick together.”

Parkin was substituted for the first time since returning to City at the start of December but, despite admitting that the 35-year-old striker was tired prior to his 73rd-minute replacement, Mills insisted that he will continue to start games as City embark on a busy schedule of fixtures.

The City boss explained: “Jon has been thriving on the way we’ve been training and playing. He started to get a bit tired in this game and I thought it was the right time to take him off.

“It’s always a difficult one, though, because you always know he has that ability to score a goal or pick somebody out with his quality. You try to leave him on as long as you can and I haven’t got a problem with Jon.

“I’d be happy for him to play 94 minutes every game, because he’s clever and can save his legs at times by getting in good positions with his experience. There’s no two ways about it that he will be on the team sheet in the next game.”

Having switched to 4-3-3 at Meadow Park, Mills was not entirely satisfied with his side’s shape and is expected to revert to a back five against Gateshead, even if defensive lynchpin Yan Klukowski still hasn’t recovered from a calf problem.

“Hopefully, Yan will be back and that will give us more options,” Mills reasoned. “Shaun Rooney also did well when he came on and we’ll have to see whether we revert back to three centre halves.

“I don’t think we looked overly comfortable with the change in formation. The performance wasn’t one of our best in recent weeks and five at the back has looked solid and worked well for us.”