Following Rovers’ last gasp 2-1 win over Fleetwood Town at Highbury, which saw Rovers move into the automatic promotion spots and decrease the gap to Wigan Athletic to 5 points, Rovers manager Tony Mowbray reacted to the game, with Rovers’ media team.
“I thought Richie’s (Smallwood) goal was magnificent, especially because it was from a player who epitomises the spirit of the team. I’m delighted for Richie and delighted for the team, because I thought they were fantastic in the first-half producing what was, probably, our best away performance, despite us only being one goal up. There was a frustration at half-time that it wasn’t more than one as we had a lot of great chances.
“We almost shot ourselves in the foot when we came out for the second-half as we gave them a goal that they didn’t deserve or earn, yet we had enough spirit to regroup and get the winner right in-front of our own fans, which helped us keep the bond between the players and the supporters strong.
“We’ve still got 19 games left to go, so today’s win is just another step towards us trying to achieve our goal for the season. What I do know, is that we’re going to go into every game and try and win it, just like we have been doing, yet I know we won’t win every single one of the 19 games we have left, because there will be frustrating days along the way, but the three points we’ve picked up today are huge because somewhere down the line, when we lose a game, we won’t be too down and we’ll know that we’ll need to bounce back and win the next one.
“Over Christmas, we had an illness in the camp and that affected the players as we dropped a few points by getting draws instead of wins, yet we still maintained the confidence in the squad and we maintained the statistic of being unbeaten for what is now, 16 games. The lads were a bit frustrated at the break to be honest, because they felt that they were denied a clear penalty, which angered them, as well as the offside goal and hitting the woodwork, but overall, throughout the game, our play was really good around their box.”
Mowbray concluded the interview by giving an overall summary of the game, as well as taking note of what was to come in the calendar for Rovers.
“Despite giving away a silly goal, the players are happy, I’m happy and hopefully we’ve sent the supporters back home happy, we just have to keep believing that we have the quality, the work rate, the desire and the spirit to keep pushing on. It was quite important to back up last week’s win over Shrewsbury with a win today because all the games from now, until the end of the season are massive. We’ve got a huge month coming up in February with the likes of Plymouth and Portsmouth away, then at the start of March we host Wigan at Ewood Park, so we just have to keep going, keep training the way we have been doing, keep the spirit high and we’ll see what the next game brings.”
