Skipper’s confident Gas can stay in League One
BRISTOL Rovers captain Luke Leahy still believes the Gas can escape relegation trouble and has called on his teammates to make themselves heroes.
The Gas were held to a 1-1 draw - which felt more like a defeat - at relegation rivals Northampton Town on Saturday, to leave Joey Barton’s side mired in the bottom four with just five games remaining.
Left-back Leahy continued his remarkable scoring form at Sixfields with his 10th of the season, but he admits he would trade them all for more points on the board as Rovers fight for survival in League One.
Speaking to the press at full-time on Saturday, the 28-year-old said: “We were quite frustrated in there after full-time, but once it’s all died down and looking back at it, it’s a positive point because we didn’t get beat.
“Even if we won, we’d still be in the same sort of position in the relegation battle, so we have to see it as a positive and that’s four points out the last two games.”
Acknowledging that a personal double-figure goals tally for the season was probably more than he had expected at the start the campaign, he said: “Yeah, definitely. I do always set a target for goals and assists, but sort of the other way around.
“But I’m delighted to get another goal and help the team. But like I’ve said before, I’d rather it be three points today.”
With just five games left, Leahy was asked what the side needed to do to stay up.
He replied: “We need to win games and we’re going to go into every game now and believe we can win the game and see where it gets us.”
Asked if he was still confident of being a League One player next season with Rovers, he answered: “Yeah, definitely, if I didn’t then I wouldn’t be walking out here if I didn’t know we’d stay up.
“All of us know that we can stay up, all of us know we are good enough to stay up and we have had spells in the season when we have looked good and we have had bad spells.
“But there are five games to go and I will make sure that everyone in the football club wants to be a League One team next season.
He added: “There is a chance for a hero and someone’s got to take it.” approach to running Rovers, which has been hailed as “the greenest club in the world”. Earlier this year, Forest Green launched a shirt partly made of coffee waste and have planning permission to build a wooden stadium next to junction 13 of the M5.