DOIDGE EYES HIS FIELD OF DREAMS
But is it at Wembley or his own back yard?
CHRISTIAN DOIDGE is hoping to score on the hallowed Wembley turf this afternoon as the in-form Forest Green Rovers striker looks to fire his team into the Football League.
But a few days before the big showdown, when The NLP calls, he’s more concerned with the lush turf in his own backyard.
“I’m just watering my grass,” says the 24-year-old Welshman. “I’ve had a couple of tips off the groundsman at Forest Green. I haven’t had my first cut yet, I’ve only just laid it, so I’m watering it ready. I’ll have a look at Wembley and see if I can get a couple of tips of their groundsman as well.”
Doidge is in a rich run of goalscoring. In all this season, the summer signing from Dagenham & Redbridge has scored 26 goals.
Opportunities
But 18 of those have come since Christmas when he took his chance after a period of struggling to get in the team. And he says there’s a simple reason for filling his boots in front of goal – being a pest to his team-mates! “It’s just confidence – and I feel like when you’re scoring goals at a club they start looking for you more,” he says. “They know you’re putting the ball in the back of the net. So I feel like that’s more of why, because I’m getting more opportunities. “When I was at Dagenham I got hardly any opportunities to score. I’d come out of games thinking, ‘I haven’t even had a touch inside their box’. It’s all about opportunities. “We create a lot too – Liam Noble has been great for me. He’s got something silly like 20 assists this season. But I’m on at him all the time about setting me up. I’m one of those annoying strikers to be honest. If he doesn’t give it to me in a game I’m down his neck! But he’s way too good for this level.
“People often talk about how players paint pictures in football. He’s like that. He’s two seconds ahead of you. He’s not strong or fast, he’s just good at football.”
Doidge also thinks Forest Green are a lot more resilient than people give them credit for.
“We’ve had lots of ups and downs,” he says. “We were flying at one point, slipped up against Lincoln and it went a bit downhill. But we picked ourselves back up and got back in a good position.
“A lot of teams might think we’re a mentally weak team, but it’s not true at all. We’ve probably been through more than anyone else.”