Doncaster Rovers v Crewe Alexandra: Trust key to Jay McGrath's rise

When the season began, the Doncaster-born centre-back who returned home from St Patrick's Athletic in January was fourth-choice.

But an injury to Richard Wood opened the door, his performance at Everton in the League Cup saw McGrath leapfrog Joseph Olowu, and a six-match ban for Tom Anderson has made him the key man.

A back spasm for Olowu had the 21-year-old shepherding midfielder Owen Bailey through at Grimsby Town last week. Olowu is due back for Crewe Alexandra's return to the ground where they knocked Rovers out of last season's play-off semi-finals on penalties.

McGrath, who was not in the squad that night, has made huge strides since.

"Firstly you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe you can do it when called upon," he said. "Then it's building that consistency so people trust in you – the manager trusts in you, the fans trust in you and your team-mates trust you.

"Even in the first couple of games, if anyone has any nerves, when the manager puts his full trust in players and they have their full backing so you can go into games knowing you're backed by everyone.

"He (McCann) just tells me to keep doing what I'm doing, stay grounded, keep your head in the here and now and just focus on doing the basics well and staying consistent.

"The best players stay consistent and do the right things week in, week out."

Doncaster will be looking for a third straight win and third consecutive clean sheet, no mean achievement without their first-choice central defensive pairing of Anderson and captain Wood.

"As defenders we pride ourselves on clean sheets,” said McGrath. "It's something we've spoken about as a group of defenders. You have to celebrate keeping the ball out of the net like you'd celebrate scoring a goal. It has to mean as much as that.

"We've had slip-ups in games but I think we need to continue building on that and putting in good defensive performances as a group."

Crewe are three points behind Doncaster with a game in hand, and can overtake them with a two-goal win.

"They've started well," commented McGrath. "They're a high energy team that look to counter fast and have a lot of pace in the team and some very good players in midfield."

McCann admits second-guessing the Railwaymen is tricky.

"They always play in the right way in terms of how they want to get on the football and hurt you," he said. "They've got different ways of playing in terms of how they press.

"We need to be ready and make sure we get our team right, we need to be ready for everything they throw at us.

"We've come up with some different things we've looked at over the last few days that hopefully can help us."

West Ham United loanee Patrick Kelly is unavailable as he is away with Northern Ireland Under-21s, but McCann has plenty of options in the midfielder's absence.

"We feel like we've built a squad that when somebody's missing someone else can step in and hopefully there's not much of a difference," he said. "There's good options with Zain (Westbrooke), Closely (Ben Close), Joe Sbarra, George Broadbent, Owen Bailey, Harry Clifton, Kyle Hurst can play in there – we've got real good options and hopefully whatever we pick is the right one."