Sleepless in Doncaster but McCann relieved to secure play-off place
Posted Sunday, May 05, 2019 by PA
Grant McCann revealed to not sleeping a wink ahead of Doncaster’s decisive win over Coventry that secured a place in the Sky Bet League One play-offs.
Doncaster needed to match or better Peterborough’s result against Burton to secure sixth place, and they did so with a 2-0 win with goals from Kieran Sadlier and John Marquis, who took his tally to 25 for the season.
“I never slept last night,” McCann said.
“I don’t know what it was, whether it was nervous tension or excitement. I struggled a wee bit to sleep.
“I don’t think I showed it. I asked Cliff (Byrne, assistant) if I looked nervous and he said I was okay. I’m pleased that it didn’t show.
“We really wanted to get that top six-place and we felt we owed it to the fans who came and supported us in great number and got behind us.
“We were very disciplined in our performance. We knew if we’d approached it in an open fashion, we could have got beat because Coventry are a good team.
“And we scored two good goals to win the game.”
Doncaster will play in-form Charlton in the semi-finals, and while suggesting his side will be labelled the underdogs, McCann says it would be a mistake to write them off.
“It’s going to be a tough game,” he said.
“They were far better than us at The Valley (a 2-0 defeat in November). We’ve come a long way since then and we probably should have beaten them at our place.
“I think it’s going to be a good game and we’ve got to make sure again we get the gameplan right.
“We’ve been underdogs all season. We’ve been written off from day one and we’ve just proved everyone wrong.”
Coventry boss Mark Robins bemoaned a lack of a cutting edge from his side as they ended a positive season with defeat.
The Sky Blues were a threat for much of the game but struggled to test Doncaster keeper Marko Marosi, much to their manager’s disappointment.
He said: “We were toothless and we lacked that cutting edge.
“You don’t want to see it but because there’s not the same thing in the game for us as there was for them. Human nature sort of took over.
“It was really poor and I don’t like seeing it, but I do understand.
“We haven’t been ruthless and that’s been our Achilles heel this season.
“Between the boxes we were really good, in the boxes we saw a couple of errors and that cost us two goals.”
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