John Coleman is relishing a Friday night clash under the floodlights as he hopes to celebrate a hat-trick of league wins.
The Reds face relegation-threatened Cheltenham tomorrow night and Coleman is hoping a bumper crowd will turn up and support his team who are looking up the table after back-to-back victories.
“The extra numbers can make a big difference,” said the Stanley boss. “I’ve always liked night games because I like the atmosphere.
“I used to love going to watch night games when I was a kid, I used to love playing in night games as a player and so it’s just a natural progression for me. I hope the players buy into that too.
“We can’t govern how many fans come in. We can try by putting in performances on the pitch that encourage people to come but in a perverse way our best performances have probably been in front of our lowest gates.
“All we can do is produce displays out there that make people want to pay their money and make everyone’s lives a bit easier.”
Stanley went through a sticky pitch where they lost five on the spin but victories over Oxford and then at promotion-chasing Southend on Saturday have got the Reds buzzing – but Coleman is aware that it is the beginning of a new era for the Robins.
“At the start of our tenure in September we got three wins on the spin and it’d be nice to do that again but I’m not underestimating Cheltenham.
“I know that they are fighting for their lives. They’ve got a new management team in place, in Russell Milton and Steve Elliott, who are well grounded with the club and very popular there and I’m sure they’ll galvanise Cheltenham to give us a difficult game.
“You can never guess what teams are going to be like. You’d think that they will get some reaction from the players. Whenever a manager goes you have the players who weren’t playing or in favour getting an arm put around them and it can bring them to life.
“Whether those players are the ones who can be a catalyst for the team to start a run remains to be seen but it’s something that we have to be wary about.”
