Crawley are in a relegation "war" and must toughen up to have any chance of survival.

That is the view of tough-tackling midfielder Danny Brown after defeat at Hereford left Reds three points off the bottom of the Conference.

The consensus this season has been that Crawley are in a false position and have too much quality to go down.

Players and fans have scoffed at relegation and claimed that everything will be fine once they put a run together.

Indeed, any team capable of overwhelming a side like Hereford at Edgar Street for the best part of an hour, like Reds did on Saturday, should be up with the Bulls pushing for a play-off place.

Hereford boss Graham Turner said as much after seeing his side steal an undeserved win with an 87th-minute header by substitute Guy Ipoua.

He said: "You have to forget about the league position Crawley are in at the moment because they are a much better team than it suggests."

"They will cause some upsets at the top of the table and we are very thankful for the three points".

But Brown is having none of it. He insists Crawley must face up to the fact they are in a relegation dog-fight and need to start scrapping to get out of it.

Brown, who scored his first goal for Reds in spectacular style, said: "We've got a war on our hands now and we all have to be man enough to get out of it.

"At times we are a bit quiet and we need to get about each other more and battle. We have to be horrible to each other on the pitch and then come off and be best of mates.

"Last week I had a suspected cracked rib and now I've got a black eye. We have to put our bodies on the line and deal with the consequences afterwards because that is the only way we are going to get out of the situation we are in."

He added: "I'm fed up of hearing that we are too good to go down. No one is too good.

"We came to Hereford and they were the ones catching us on the break. That is unheard of. But we still lost.

"At the moment it's fresh in everyone's minds that we played well but next week when you look at the league table, nobody is going to remember that. They just see we lost."

History provides plenty of examples of talented teams to be relegated.

Remember the quality-rich Nottingham Forest side who went down at the end of Brian Clough's era?

And what about the West Ham team a couple of years ago that had a wealth of gifted youngsters but still suffered the drop?

The concern for Crawley is that their undisputed improvement under manager John Hollins has not been reflected in the number of points they have collected.

Six in seven league games is not a total that will worry their relegation rivals.

Hollins, though, is not one to look at the negatives. He is happy with the progress made and saw plenty to encourage him on Saturday.

Reds, who were without two of their best players in Daryl Clare and Simon Wormull, suffered a body blow when they went behind after just seven minutes as Andy Williams neatly side-stepped goalkeeper Phil Smith and tapped home after he had been sent clear by a lucky ricochet.

But they responded superbly and twice went close to levelling before Brown's wonder-strike.

Defender-cum-striker Chris Giles, again deputising for groin-injury victim Clare, side-footed wide when he should have scored on 19 minutes and then hit the bar with a header early in the second half.

Once Brown had produced his moment of magic just past the hour, when he smashed a first-time shot from 30yards into the roof of the net, there looked to be only one winner.

That was until Ipoua eluded his marker on the edge of the area to meet a deep cross and loop a header over Smith.

Hollins said: "It is a cruel game sometimes but we have to take a lot of credit from it.

"In the second half we really played and we could have got a win.

"We didn't get any points but we are getting somewhere because it is not easy to come to a top side like Hereford and play as well as we did."

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