Joe Ironside insists he never had any doubts as he stepped up to net a point-saving penalty for Rovers at Sutton United.
Ironside missed from the spot with his last in-game penalty for Rovers, but showed tremendous composure to fire home deep into added time to earn an important share of the spoils against Sutton.
“You can either be the hero or the villain taking a penalty,” he said. “I’m confident in my penalty taking ability and I was nice and confident going up to that one.
“We battled well in tough conditions and I think that’s what we deserved.
“In those situations you’ve got to try to stay as cool as possible. I know it was the 95th minute or whatever but I’d have taken it the same as if it was in the second minute.
“That’s just how it has to be when taking a penalty - just wiping the emotion from it.”
Rovers looked to be set for a defeat with Sutton looking to close the gap to safety in Sky Bet League Two after Craig Eastmond gave the hosts the lead with 17 minutes remaining.
But they responded well, with Ironside’s penalty drawing them level in the dying moments.
“We nicked a point in the last minute and hopefully with scoring so late on we can build on that and start turning these into wins,” the striker said.
“I’m just focusing on my next game and trying to score in that. That’s what I’ll be doing.
“It was a game where we’ve just had to dig deep. The pitch wasn’t great, it was blowing a gale but we’ve had to dig deep and in the last minute we’ve got our rewards.
“It was a big battling performance from us. We needed to match it to try to let our quality shine through.
“We didn’t want to get beat. We came for the three points but we will take the one in the circumstances.”
