Doncaster Rovers: Tommy Rowe keen for team to stick to their footballing beliefs

But Tommy Rowe is convinced if they stick to their beliefs, that will turn.

Rovers were comfortably the better team for the first 36 minutes at Bolton Wanderers on Tuesday but failed to take their chances, and lost 3-0.

“We need to stick together because eventually it will turn,” insisted Rowe, who started playing off the front but moved to centre-back after Joseph Olowu’s first-half red card.

“We still believe it will come. As a squad we won’t lose any hope.

“If we’ve had a bad game we’ve got to accept but in that first 30 minutes we were excellent.”

Rovers have suffered with injuries all season, and many is the game where manager Richie Wellens has bemoaned refereeing decisions but Rowe says they must use the adversity as fuel.

“It’s a siege mentality,” he explained. “We know what’s in the changing room, that’s why we start like we do, because we believe in our ability. We could have gone cautious with our away form but we knew we had to play in a way to get goals. When fans watch you, you’ve got to attack.

“We believe in what the manager’s doing. We’re seeing young players putting great performances in. When you are against it with 10 men and you see the fight and the togetherness at the end, that is positive.”

Wellens only used one player from an extremely youthful bench to protect them.

“We stayed with the team on the sidelines for the whole 90 minutes, we didn’t sit down, we wanted to gee them on,” he said.

“The average age of subs was probably below 18. When you’re introducing kids you want to be two or 3-0 up, you don’t want to be putting them on where it’s tough going.”