Two weeks after their disappointing result and performance against Crawley Town, Swindon travelled to another side at the wrong end of the table in Rochdale looking to get back to winning ways.
Both Joe Tomlinson and Louie Barry were back from injury, but Ben Garner’s side was missing key-man Harry McKirdy, who is set for a spell on the side-lines, and on-loan defender Jake O’Brien who was taken ill.
Despite having these two talented players back, Town was unable to trouble the scoreline, with McKirdy’s absence painfully obvious.
After signing on a free transfer, the former Port Vale striker has been by far the biggest surprise of the season, becoming an integral part of the side.
It’s not just his goals we’ll miss, but his ability to take on defenders and his general persona on the pitch, which can get him in trouble, but the positives far outweigh any negatives.
Having Barry back will make a huge difference moving forward, as he is a player who can change a game all by himself, but sadly not even the talented Villa youngster could find the breakthrough at Spotland.
Town had their chances with Josh Davison having the best opportunities throughout the game, but sadly unable to put them away, but the biggest miss on the day was Louis Reed, it’s no coincidence that we’ve only taken one point from a possible six from two games we expected to take at least four points.
After these results, Town now finds themselves 10th place in League Two, but I’m fully in the cup half full camp despite recent results, as we have much kinder fixtures than those around us, as we only face two sides in the top seven in our last seven games.
We’ve seen what this side can produce on their day, and they now have seven cup finals to earn something from this campaign.
The biggest highlight of the past couple of weeks came from Abuja, Nigeria, where Town goalkeeper Jojo Wollacott became the fourth player to qualify for a World Cup whilst at Town after Ghana beat Nigeria on away goals.
Jojo joins Town greats Alan McLoughlin, Jan Age Fjørtoft, and Massimo Luongo who went to the biggest stage in our beautiful game.
He’ll be facing Portugal, Uruguay and South Korea at the tournament, setting up the task of keeping out arguably the greatest player of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo.
The career trajectory of Swindon’s No. 1 has been a superb story since he first arrived at SN1, with his contract coming to an end this summer, I’m sure Director of Football Ben Chorley is hard at work making sure Jojo is with us for the foreseeable future.