by Martin Spinks
martin.spinks@thesentinel.co.uk

DANNY Higginbotham was happy to laugh off dressing room jibes about him “shinning” his excellent opener on Saturday.

In truth, Higginbotham hit his shot with accuracy and threatened often enough that he might have scored a hat-trick in the end.

“I’m going to get stick for that goal,” he grinned afterwards. “They’re already telling me it was shinner, but it wasn’t.

“Either way, it’s nice reward for me, because you don’t often get that as a defender.

“They’re all great goalkeepers in this league, so beating any keeper is good.

“That’s two goals for me this season, so that’s probably me done.”

Higginbotham was later denied by a terrific save and a header off the line as that possible treble went begging in the second half.

“Some of the lads have been giving me stick, saying it should have been a hat-trick, but fair play to Paul Robinson for making a couple of saves.”

And typical of a defender, Higginbotham was almost as pleased with the clean sheet as he was with his rare first-half strike.

“Yeah, the important thing was not conceding late on to make sure of that clean sheet,” he stressed. “It was a good victory for us, to get the three points and the clean sheet.”

He acknowledged that the 59th-minute dismissal of Rovers defender Christopher Samba was a turning of the screw in a game Stoke were already leading 2-0.

“It changed the game a little bit, but fair play to the midfield and forwards because they kept harrying and so made it easier for us at the back.”

Higginbotham was also stand-in skipper in Abdoulaye Faye’s absence, a far cry from less than two months ago when he was enduring an extended stay on the sidelines.

“I was out of the team for a long time. To train all week and not get a game at the end of it is frustrating, so now I’m in the team I just hope I stay in.”

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