You know when the nightmare of the last two years is well and truly over when you get results like this.

It wasn’t just getting a win against a team two Divisions higher that was so pleasing, it was the manner of achieving it. We went to Home Park last night with a well worked out game plan, stuck to it exactly and reaped the rewards accordingly.

Richard Money had made changes again, as we lined up Ince, Pead, Roper, Westwood, Fox, Taylor, Gerrard, Keates, Fangueiro Constable , Sam.

Subs: Gilmartin, McDermott, Dann, Demontagnac, Wright.

The appearance of James Constable was a complete shock, as the club had been saying that he wouldn’t be fit, but it was fortunate, as Butler was suffering from a slight back problem and DD did’nt wat to risk him ahead of an important league game on Saturday.

Yet again, however, the defence was solid, keeping the fourth clean sheet of the season, although Nick Chadwick did contrive to miss a couple of good chances for the home side. At the other end, however, Dean Keates should have scored one and could have got another.

The goal eventually came when Mark Wright, on as sub, cut the ball back to Scott Dann and the young centre back slotting the ball home superbly with his first touch after coming on up front.

The only down side on the night was the fact that the win got a little lost amongst a host of other Championship teams falling to Division 2 outfits, including the publicity grabbing Sunderland losing at lowly Bury and Crystal Palace, also media darlings, crashing at home to Notts County.

The upside was Merson, commenting on the game for Sky Sports News, looking completely bewildered as to how a team he took to the depths could be playing so well.

Ian Holloway came out with his usual mixture of contradictory nonsense after the game:-

“We just didn’t score. We needed to make more of our possession, but that was a very, very good performance”.

“If it was a boxing match it would have been stopped in the second half. We just didn’t create enough and our final ball into the box wasn’t quite there”.

“They have had one shot on goal all game and scored with it, and sometimes at the moment we are not getting what we deserve.”

Dicky Dosh, on the other hand, was modest about the substitutions and, obviously, pleased at a plan coming together:

“Sometimes you take the gamble and it comes off and it is very nice and very pleasing when that happens,” Money said.

“It was a good finish as well. He (Dann) is normally a centre-half but we were a little bit stretched up front tonight”.

“Tony Bedeau has been injured for a while and Martin Butler had a slight problem in his back yesterday, and with a very important league game at the weekend we thought it wasn’t right to risk him. It was pretty much all hands on deck up front.”

He added: “I thought we played with a tremendous shape tonight and we were very difficult to break down.”

Attendance: 6,407. (228 away).