HAVING seen Doncaster Rovers suffer back-to-back away cup defeats in four days, striker Chris Brown is hoping that normal service will be resumed in Saturday’s League One game against Swindon Town at the County Ground.
Rovers will go into the game boasting the best away record in the league having lost just once three months ago.
With Rovers level on points with leaders Tranmere, there has been some suspiction among fans that their priorities are just focused on the league.
“That’s not the case,” argued Brown. “The manager took the FA Cup game at Oldham on Saturday very seriously and we wanted to win, as was the case in the JP Trophy at Crewe on Tuesday.
“Not only did we want to go through in both games but you get confidence from every win and it would have been nice to go into the Swindon match having beaten both Oldham and Crewe.”
The manner of Rovers defeat at Gresty Road, where they lost out in penalty shoot-out, was particularly disappointing for Brown as it was his stoppage-time equaliser which brought it about. He also converted his spot kick.
Rovers climb into an automatic promotion spot may have surprised some people within the game, but not Brown.
“We’ve got a lot of experienced players and I think that we are a hard-working side,” he told The Star. ”We’ve also got players in the team who can win games for us, such as Cotts (David Cotterill).
“We are improving all the time and we are learning how to win games at League One level and things are going well for us. As players you’ve got to believe that you can do well as there is no point otherwise in playing games; you got to have that self-belief and confidence and you get that by winning tough games against the top teams and hopefully we can keep doing that.
“I’m quite happy from a personal point of view how things are going - though you can always do better. I’ve got to keep on scoring goals in the second half of the season.”
“But I’m not looking any further ahead than the Swindon game. I’ve not seen much of them this season, but I know that they made some good signings in the summer and they were one of the pre-season favourites.
“They made a good start but they have lost their way a bit recently and if we beat them on Saturday we’ll be ten points clear of them. I don’t think that there will be any more pressure on us because we are in the top two. Teams have been coming to the Keepmoat all season and being happy to settle for a point.”