Rotherham United v Barnsley FC: Reds defender and boyhood Birmingham City fan urges visitors to 'journey on' to the end of the road

The lyrics to Harry Lauder’s classic ‘Keep Right On To The End Of The Road' are also quite appropriate for O’Keeffe and Barnsley in their current situation.

Despite a poor Reds’ run ahead of their derby at Rotherham, the Midlander still retains play-off hope.

He said: “There’s no better way to get fans back on side than a derby win. Hopefully, we can go and do that and start our run then.

“It’s not over. I know everyone is saying ‘10 points (gap), it’s done.’ We believe we can do it and will give everything we can until the last game.

“It may look done, but we are going to fight until the very end. Us and the staff still think we can do it.

“It was my first time in the play-offs last year and I really enjoyed it and I want that again and I am sure a lot of the lads want that.

“We need to win games, no two ways about it. It doesn’t matter how we do it.”

For the Millers, motivation comes from extinguishing memories of their appalling loss at Oakwell in November when they were castigated by furious visiting fans at the end.

Defender Joe Rafferty added: “We can go different ways about it and say ‘it’s all about revenge’ and stuff like that.

“It is just another match, but when you get beaten like that as a team – it wasn’t a heavy defeat or anything – it was just that our performance was not very good and we all felt it.

“It would be good to go into this and beat them. They are more than beatable as everyone can see.”