Jack Bycroft is a very difficult person not to like and Saturday felt like that goodwill might now be stemming from the pitch as much as from who he is.

Few players can excite from an opening interview, but the 22-year-old certainly did as photos emerged of him on the pitch as Swindon won the League Two title and soundbites of a love of Wes Foderingham. As a Swindon fan of practically the same age, this spoke to me on a very deep level. It was clear that we needed him to be the next home run hit off Steve Mildenhall’s Louisville Slugger.

When Swindon sign a goalkeeper these days, my instinct is to trust that Mildenhall knows what he is doing and then leave it at that. Steven Benda, Jojo Wollacott, Sol Brynn, and Murphy Mahoney have all repaid the trust he showed in players with minimal experience. I don’t necessarily know what to look for in a goalkeeper, and he clearly does.

I have never really gone along with everyone else’s need to have a permanent goalkeeper, as I think that you just get the best one you can and then if they are good then they won’t stay more than a year anyway. However, with the playoffs already a distant possibility, finding somebody who could be the guy beyond this season did make a fair amount of sense.

Following a rather sheepish first 15 minutes of his debut, Bycroft seemed to settle into things and look the part at Crewe. Possibly by virtue of Swindon conceding fewer big chances than they had been under Michael Flynn, in the time since his performances had not been as eye-catching as his predecessors. I like his ability to both play short and long with accuracy, and he is more assertive off his line than either Mahoney or Brynn, but he wasn’t showing his talent as blatantly as they had.

Last weekend against MK Dons, he was partially culpable for the opening goal as the hosts burst the balloon on any real optimism of things moving in a positive direction and the question of how he would respond became of real intrigue.

Even if the whole season felt like it was sitting discarded in a bin, Swindon still had to fulfil their final 13 fixtures of the season, more for everyone else’s benefit than our own. To begin that trudge to the finishing line, it was off to Edgeley Park and the home of the league leaders. Something has to be made of this end to the season and the viability of various members of the squad is one of a few things to be gained, Bycroft arguably chief among them. Would it be best to return to Mildenhall’s well to fish out another one on loan in the summer?

With 175 days since Town’s last clean sheet on the road, the Salisbury-born goalkeeper made his case in emphatic fashion. Eight saves, of which at least three were the ones generally residing in the top drawer, saw him properly start to write his name on the list of the other success stories of the Mildenhall academy.

Twice his clawing arm came out of nowhere to defy physics and also Stockport as despite a generally more switched-on and resilient defensive performance, Swindon still needed Bycroft to bail them out.

At this moment in time, I would have three names written in pen on the team sheet for the first game of next season. Most of the spots would still be entirely blank, but Bycroft’s name was in pencil. Performances like this have me taking the lid off my pen.