We need courage to reach the play-offs – Hockaday
BRAVERY is the key ingredient to halting Forest Green's late-season slump in form, according to manager Dave Hockaday.
Rovers have lost three of their last four Blue Square Bet Premier matches without scoring, and Hockaday admits they need to win the majority of their ten remaining fixtures to keep the play-offs dream alive.
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under pressure: Lee Fowler for Rovers against Grimsby
Struggling Barrow will certainly need to be seen off at the New Lawn tomorrow (3pm), when there will be no hiding place for anyone dressed in electric green.
Hockaday said: "People go on about Gary Lineker and great goal scorers, and bravery is about getting in the six-yard box and putting a foot, knee or head on the ball.
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"We're lacking that at the moment, to get in where it hurts, and that's the reason why we've not taken a lot more points.
"We've got ten games left and 30 points would put us on 87, which would give us a very good chance of the play-offs at least.
"Yes we've got to be winning pretty much every game, but it's not over until it's over and we've got to keep on going.
"I can't ask any more of my players in terms of endeavour and playing lovely football – I've just got find somebody who is brave enough to get in the box and put it in the net.
"We seem to have lost that from all of our strikers at the same time, but nobody does it on purpose and we'll keep on working and working.
"We'll probably score a horrible goal to get us going again."
Tuesday's 1-0 defeat at the hands of Grimsby Town followed a crushingly dispiriting pattern, as the Mariners sat back for most of the night before scrambling a 74th minute winner.
Tom Naylor's strike came after an uncharacteristic fumble by Rovers goalkeeper Sam Russell – a cruel lesson in ruthlessness which must be learned.
"It summed up our little micro-season of the last four or five games," Hockaday said.
"It's now a given that from box to box we're as good as anyone in this league, and it's now about fine tuning what happens in the box.
"We had two or three great chances in the first half and they had nothing, and in the second half we got a little bit frustrated.
"Then our keeper, who has been brilliant for us, makes a mistake and they score from their second shot on target.
"We have got to learn from these teams, who don't play well but find a way to win games.
"I don't want to sound defeatist because we're building something, so we'll give everything we've got to beat Barrow and take it from there."
Defender Dale Bennett (ankle) has an outside chance of returning to the squad tomorrow but Jamie Collins, Steve Brogan and Reece Styche are definite absentees.
â Tomorrow's match is being played in support of Climate Week. Rovers were the first sports club in world to achieve the EU's Gold Standard in Environmental Management, and over the first half of the 2012/13 season they have cut carbon emissions by almost 20 percent.
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