“It is always nicer when you get those long games out of the way” – Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill ahead of hosting Hartlepool United

Steve Cotterill
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill has insisted that he is glad that his side of got some of the longer journey’s this season out of the way early ahead of hosting Hartlepool United this weekend.

Following on from eight away games in their opening 11, including trips to Gateshead and Oldham Athletic consecutively, Cotterill is now more delighted at the prospect of a few more home games in the coming months.

“Between now and the new year or even between now and the end of the season, it is always nicer when you get those long games out of the way," he said. "The one thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to travel the distances you travel and then find the game is off, that is a problem.

"We had that last year, we ended up with Mansfield getting called off a couple of times and I think there was another game last year that ended up being called off and we had to go and play it again.

“You don’t want any of those games called off, once you have done the travelling you want to play the game. You want to play the game anyway because if you don’t, all you are going to create is a bottleneck further on down the line so hopefully that will benefit us as the season goes on, I don’t honestly know how that looks yet so I will let other people discuss that.”

Ahead of hosting the side currently in 18th place, Cotterill said: “They are a decent team, we won’t take anything for granted, we don’t look at anybody’s results in the previous games, that doesn’t mean anything. They will get full respect from us; they have got some good players and a good young manager (Darren Sarll). We obviously want to win the game like they will, but everyone gets our full respect.”

Ryan Inniss is now back and available for the weekend’s game against Hartlepool after serving his retrospective three-game suspension following the visit to Solihull Moors earlier this month.

“We need every player available, don’t we?” Cotterill said on his defenders return. “We have lost Sean Long and Teddy Jenks for a small period, so the more players that you have got available to you the better.”

On both Long and Jenks, Cotterill said: “Teddy is going to be a little bit longer by the look of it, his injury is slightly worse than Sean’s and we will just wait and see how they go and how they react in perhaps the next week or so before we can put a bigger timeframe on it. We don’t want to put a timeframe on things now and that not be correct.”

Liam Sercombe was taken off at Gateshead following a dead leg in the game, but managed to play 45 minutes at Oldham following Jenks’ injury enforced replacement. On the attacking midfielder, Cotterill said: “His dead leg was still sore on Tuesday and we got to a point where we probably had to put him on in that midfield area and whenever you are searching for a goal, Sercs is always going to be one that I will turn to.

“So, that was part of that substitution the other night, they (Oldham) were also playing in a back five, so it wasn’t like we were up against wingers or whatever. It was an easy change in the game, my only problem was I didn’t want him to get another bang on it because he might have been in trouble. That is why we didn’t start him the other night, it was quite swollen really on Saturday night, but hopefully he will be fine.”

Rovers have now played 11 games this season, including over a third of their away games already being completed before October. On whether researching teams before a game is any easier now that teams have nearly played a quarter of their games, Cotterill said: “No, the thing is until you have played one set of games, but bear in mind even when you have played 23 games you have only played every team once.

“So, I don’t necessarily think that, if you look at our fixtures we have had quite a tough run, not just in being away, but the teams that we have played. We have played a lot of the top teams and that happens for a little while longer as well.”

The two sides last met back in the 2021/22 season in which Forest Green won League Two under Rob Edwards. Rovers won 3-1 at Hartlepool and drew 1-1 at The New Lawn in that season.

READ MORE: “It is just so disappointing when you come and dominate a game” – Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill after Oldham Athletic defeat

READ MORE: "He was 11 out of 10 in the first half" - Forest Green boss Steve Cotterill praises midfielder after victory at Gateshead takes Rovers top