Darren Moore is hopeful the 2-1 victory at promotion rivals Doncaster will prove to be a turning point for Port Vale.
After their impressive start to the season, Vale arrived at Moore’s former club having won just one of their previous 10 league matches – a run which had seen them drop out of Sky Bet League Two’s top seven.
Goals from Ryan Croasdale and Lorent Tolaj saw Vale take command before Jamie Sterry’s deflected 30-yard piledriver pulled a goal back for Doncaster in the final 10 minutes.
Moore is hopeful the manner of the performance will have his side back on track.
“It’s been a hard couple of months but if you are going to get back on to a streak, you have to get that win from somewhere,” he said.
“Let’s hope this win is the first one. I think this really optimises the team and it was a performance that we built on from the Cheltenham game.
“We’ve come away to a difficult place and put in a strong performance.
“Hopefully when we pick the bones out of the game, it’ll stand us in good stead for the tough week ahead and prepare us for another important game.
“It was always going to be hard fought and if we were going to get the win, we would have to earn it. Ben Amos pulled a wonderful save off at 0-0 and if that had gone in, it could easily have been a different game.”
Grant McCann bemoaned a frustrating day at the office as defensive mistakes cost Rovers.
Despite a strong performance from his side, McCann could not mask his irritation as costly errors led to defeat.
He said: “It’s a really frustrating day at the office for sure because I thought we’d done more than enough from an attacking point of view to win the game but when you defend like we did for the two goals, ultimately we didn’t deserve to win.
“Watching them back, it has me even more disappointed because it’s really poor from us.
“We just keep getting to a certain point where we get a good win or start to build a bit of momentum and then we just slip back again when we’ve got a good chance to leave the chasing pack behind. But we just pull ourselves back in the mix.
“We’ve done that too many times this season and I’ve said to the boys after the game that it has to change to make sure we can get ourselves away from people. I’m just really disappointed for sure.”
