ROVERS v Huddersfield March 8th 2014

First of all I would like to thank all the friends I made on the Huddersfield JA606 when we played at the John Smiths for all their good wishes. Secondly, you will notice that we no longer have Fuzzy doing our match thread. He lives in Switzerland and the official word is that he is too busy with his job. The unofficial word is that he took his bat and ball home, so, no more graphs.

I want to begin by hoping you will all join in good wishes and a complete recovery to Bonghani Khumalo, who was badly injured playing for South Africa against Brazil on Wednesday. It looks like being all of next season before he is fit again. Thanks Bongs for all your efforts this season at the Keepmoat and we hope to see you again.

Now, let's look at last week when we were slammed 5-0 at Bournemouth. Some like me were calling for Paul Dickov to resign and make way for Messers Flynn and Jones. Well, that was scuppered when it was announced that Rob Jones is having an operation on his nack and will be away from the club till next season.

So, what did Paul Dickov say about last week. He apologized on behalf of the players and staff, particularly to those who made the long journey. He even called one supporter who sent an e mail to the club. " I take full responsibility and any e mail that comes to the club gets forwarded to me. If I feel it necessary to get back to the person concerned I will. We are all together in this, players, management and fans."

Dickov may go into the loan market after this weekend to bring in a replacement for Bongs, but for Saturday Paul Quinn is fit and may take over at right back with Gabby Tamas at centre back. He could also come in at centre half. One piece of business is that Sam Johnstone has extended his loan to give Ross Turnbull a little more time to get back.

Rovers will have Billy Sharp back after his three match suspension and Mark Duffy could be back. Theo Robinson is available to play against the Terriers who he was with last season. Dickov has also hinted at other changes, one of which could see Enda Stevens off the bench to replace James Husband who has been a bit off recently.

Huddersfield Manager Mark Robins has warned his players that this could be a hard game. Rovers need the points and any team which has beaten Leicester, QPR and Wigan cannot be taken lightly. However, after last week's demolition of the Dingles, (something we should have done), Town are now well placed at half way on 43 points.

Leading scorer James Vaughan, will definitely be missing as he has not recovered from a calf injury, but Jon Stead could return after his loan to Oldham ended. Both Olliver Norwood and Martin Paterson are back from duty with Northern Ireland in a friendly in Cyprus.

When we played at the John Smiths we were able to hold the Terriers to a goal less draw. Let's hope tomorrows game has a few goals, most of them in the Huddersfield net. A win tomorrow and the again on Tuesday at home to Watford will go a long way to our survival.

Match Officials

Referee Mark Haywood

Assistants Dan Robathan and Iain Siddall

4th Official Mark Jones

Finally I would like to comment on news this week from other Championship clubs. Leicester have announced losses of 34 million, QPR 65 million, taking their losses to 177 million and Forest , 17 million. Brighton recently announced losses of 14.7 million and of course Bolton came out some time ago to say they had total debts of 164 million.

Add to this the fact that Cellino, who hopes to buy out the Weeds, is in court for a Tax trial in Italy which could affect the possible takeover. Birmingham owner Carson Yeung has also been sentenced to six years in prison in Hong Kong on money laundering charges and things look bleak for our game.

Those of us ( me included), who were in favour of the Sequentia deal must look at what could have been. It was good that our present owners stepped up to the plate and put that to bed. However, I still worry what will happen if we do go down and lose the six million from the Football League
will they still be as interested. We all hope so but that remains to be seen

Enjoy the game COYR