BURY’S hard-earned draw on a pudding of a pitch at the JD Stadium on Saturday proved to winger Craig Jones that the side can adapt to the conditions to grind out the points.

The Shakers were forced to abandon the slick passing game that helped them to the top of League Two in the early months of the season and dig in under a barrage of long balls from current leaders Wycombe Wanderers.

It wasn’t pretty as both sides struggled to string two passes together on a pitch that resembled a mud bath, after snow fell on an already sodden surface to create a mass of sludge and puddles.

Bury managed to hack their way into a first-half lead before conceding a controversial equaliser after the break, yet they battened down the hatches to withstand a late assault from the table-toppers.

And that gave Jones hope that, despite falling to 10th place in the table, the Shakers can still battle their way to promotion.

“It was probably one of the worst games, condition-wise, that I have ever played in, but the lads got on with it and we were unlucky not to win it, to be honest,” said the 27-year-old midfielder.

“They are probably the most direct team we will come up against so I am not sure the pitch affected them as much as it did us, but we still played some good stuff on it and it was just unfortunate we couldn’t see out the game.

“But we have adapted well to the conditions and proved that we can fight if we need to.”

Manager David Flitcroft has been busy reshaping the team in recent weeks to combat the worsening surface at the JD Stadium.

After relaying the drainage in the summer, the Shakers boss says it has “failed” in a number of places, prompting him to change formation from 3-4-3 to 4-4-2 and adopt a more direct approach.

But Jones believes Saturday’s battling point demonstrated the players were well-equipped to put plan B into action, while they try to ride out the wintry conditions.

“The manager and staff have brought players in that all have footballing backgrounds, so to go from one extreme to the other – it takes time to do that,” said the former TNS winger.

“The pitch is quite unpredictable. It’s heavy, but in some places the ball was sliding on the snow and in others it was holding in the water and stopping under your feet, so it was tricky, but we just had to get on with it.

“We are still a passing team though, and if the pitches start to improve a little bit once we get rid of this bad weather then hopefully we can go back to what we do best and put a good run together like we did at the start of the season.”

But Jones is also confident that, after standing up to Wycombe’s robust style of play, Bury are capable of mixing it with the better teams in the division.

“Their centre halves were coming up for goal kicks, it was quite embarrassing to be honest,” he added.

“But if they are top of the league then we need to kick on from here and go and catch them.

“You have to show them respect, they haven’t got where they are by fluke, what they have been doing is effective, it’s working against a lot of teams.

“Thankfully, we didn’t give in and we have ended up taking a point from the game.”