Straight-batting Doncaster Rovers duo refuse to take bait despite play-off chatter growing

Doncaster Rovers boss Grant McCann and defender Joseph Olowu both faced the local media on Thursday afternoon but neither were budging. Both stuck religiously to the party line, despite the clamour for the conversation to turn towards Rovers' march towards the League Two play-offs. They produced the kind of straight-batting that the best partnerships in cricket would be envious of.

In a conversation over Zoom with the Free Press, BBC Sheffield and ITV Calendar, the pair were continually probed about the club's chances of gatecrashing the top seven spots in the table but neither succumbed to a juicy soundbite.

And you can hardly blame them. For McCann, the mouthpiece of the football club, it's a drum he's been banging for weeks now.

"I can't control what happens elsewhere but I can certainly control what happens at our club," he said ahead of a tasty-looking home game with Barrow this weekend.

"That's just been our only motive really for the last 15 games, once the window shut in January. We can only focus on what we do."

The nearest the 44-year-old came to even broaching the subject was when he brushed off suggestions that a change in mentality would now take place, given their fine, eight-game winning run.

"No. The mentality is just about the next game. If we starting thinking different then we won't make the play-offs, simple as that. We are focused on the next game and having a good end to the season.

"We don't look anywhere else or at anyone else. If we'd have started looking anywhere else around Christmas time then we'd probably be relegated by now considering where we were in the table. All we've done is focus on us."

Olowu toed much the same line when he chatted to reporters shortly after his manager.

"We've put ourselves in this position but we're just taking it as it comes," said the former Arsenal man. "It's genuinely just facing the game ahead of us and giving that game our entirety whether it be phsyically, mentally, emiotionally. We'll give it every ounce of effort.

"You don't want to get too excited or too giddy."

When Olowu stated that his family and friends are unable to make it to the final home game of the season, the Free Press chanced their arm one last time by asking whether that means they'll make sure they're in situ for the play-off challenge that hopefully lies ahead.

Upon hearing the question, the 24-year-old took a brief pause and produced a playful smirk before uttering an answer entirely befitting of the ones that preceded it.

“We'll approach Barrow first and then just go from there,” he said.