Stuart Gray was a happy man after seeing his Northampton Town side beat Cheltenham Town 2-1 at Sixfields on Saturday, their seventh win (with two draws) in their last 10 matches at home.

"Over the course of a season you will have to win your fair share of ugly games and we did that today," he said.

"You know that Cheltenham will work hard and I saw that when I saw them win at Swindon in the cup earlier in the season. It was not one of our better performances but we got 3 points because we were prepared to fight, grind and scrap. We had a difficult spell at the start of the second half but we battled through it.

"At half time we said the next goal was going to be important and they got it. It was a disappointing goal from our point of view and that put us on the back foot but we came back well. We got stronger as the game went on and scored with two very good finishes.

"All credit to Ryan Gilligan for his goal. He guided the ball in with a perfect connection and it was great to see it go in.

"Chris Doig was on the bench and he is just about fit again. I knew that Cheltenham work very hard and we would have to outwork them to win. I thought his presence on the bench would give us a lift and his voice in the dressing room would be a big help.

"We are turning Sixfields in to a bit of a fortress now and had we got any sort of a break in the game against Yeovil we would be on a long unbeaten run here.

"Giles Coke has had a good week's training and he will play for the reserves on Tuesday and that will be great for him, but there is no pressure on him to rush in to first team contention. It will take as long as it takes.

"I was delighted with the result, it was points over performance but we won't make any apologies for that."

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