KEVIN MacDonald has challenged Gary Roberts to maintain his current good form for the remainder of Swindon Town’s season.

The winger has endured a difficult first term at the County Ground since arriving from Huddersfield over the summer, with bursts of quality interspersed amongst long periods of absence through injury and ineffective spells.

However, Roberts has come alive in the past week, playing a major role in the 4-1 defeat of Crewe before scoring for the first time since February 19 as Town beat Stevenage 3-0 on Saturday.

With the League One play-offs looming, MacDonald is keen for the wide man not to let his momentum slip.

“The last two performances that Gary Roberts has put in are at the standard he has set himself over the years,” he said. “He needs to be doing that for the rest of the season for us.

“He took his goal well but also created a lot of stuff for other people and I think he was probably the best player on the pitch.”

Town are likely to continue to be without 10 first-team players when they make the trip to Scunthorpe this weekend, although MacDonald is hopeful Simon Ferry, Tommy Miller and Alan Navarro will be available for selection for the play-offs.

“We’re hopeful that Simon, Alan Navarro and Tommy Miller will come back into contention, although none of three are training at the moment,” he said.

“Simon has only been out from Tuesday, but we need to try to get them back in. I wouldn’t decry the two performances of the young lads, though.

“I thought Mark Francis at Sheffield United did very well for 20 minutes. Connor Waldon was on for 10 minutes today and did very well as well.

“If we don’t get any of the senior players back you can see that we’re not frightened of throwing them in because the kids are big supporters of Swindon Town as well. It gives the crowd a boost as well.”