Paul Stancliffe was pleased with the effort his team put in to earn a point against Mansfield Town U18s on Saturday.
Neither side managed to break the deadlock, but given the Stags are the defending champions Stancliffe was happy with the performance.
“When you come to places like this you know you’re in for a tough battle,” he said.
“They’re not going to give you much time on the ball so you have to work hard to get your rewards and we did. We’re really pleased it’s a clean sheet. We’ve worked hard and as a team effort it was brilliant and and they put you under a lot of pressure as I’ve said, but for chances created you know, I thought we created the better chances.”
Rovers’ best chance of the first half came when Myron Gibbons broke through Mansfield’s defence only to pull the trigger from 30 yards out and the ball went over the cross bar – much to Mansfield’s relief.
Gibbons was one of two players who returned from injury, along with Rilwan Olaosun.
“It’s never nice being injured and they’ve worked ever so hard to get back so they’ve had their little reward and hopefully they can just build on that,” said Stancliffe.
Rovers were again relentless in the second half after James Morgan broke down the right and crossed it into the box for the ball to scrape substitute Lewis Scattergood’s head and be cleared for a Rovers corner.
It was bitter-sweet result, however, as Gibbons and Olaosun return from injury but Cameron Baldock-Smith picked up a knock and had to leave on crutches.
“I think it’s more of a kick than anything which means it’s probably just a bit of bruising but we’ll probably just have to wait until the swellings gone down,” added Stancliffe.