IT'S been a strange period of the season indeed. We have had a mid-season break, a re-start with a brace of televised games in which we sunk without trace and lost hope of automatic promotion, a period of re-kindled hope and then a home defeat to already-relegated Yeovil which finally quashed any lingering thoughts of automatic elevation from League One.

Now we are just playing out our last few games in a phoney-war atmosphere as we wait for the arrival of (most likely) Sheffield United at the County Ground in a couple of weeks when the matches once again take on significance.

I hate the play-offs and I don’t want to go to Wembley. There, I’ve said it. Even though the mini-knock out competition at the fag-end of the season offers us hope of second-level football, I still don’t like it.

The elation at seeing what was one of the team’s finest performances in the last 50 years when we defeated Sunderland at Wembley and the thrilling encounter with Leicester City featuring Hoddle’s side-footed goal and Chalky’s well-crafted penalty, still doesn’t wipe away the misery of Millwall in May and the over-riding feeling that the play-offs are simply unjust and wrong.

I know they are never going to go away but the idea that the team that finishes third at the end of the season doesn’t go up and the one that finishes below them can, goes against natural justice and the idea of fair play.

We are stuck with the 3-match cup completion to decide a league competition which has stretched over 9-months and 46 games.

So what are our chances? Given what we have seen in the way of performances from our team of late, they don’t seem great. It is very hard to know what to expect from a side that has been so inconsistent in the last quarter of the season.

We could get a brilliant individual performance ala Galdwin at Rochdale or an ineffectual display of attacking and poor defending which has characterised far too many recent games. Like the play-offs themselves, our form is also something of a lottery.

The form books of other likely participants in the play-offs makes for interesting, if not necessarily meaningful, reading: Most play-off final defeats – Sheffield Utd, most first round defeats – MK Dons and most unsuccessful team of all time in the play-offs – Preston North End. Certainly a win at Deepdale on Saturday could mean Preston dropping to third place and the play-offs which might work in Swindon’s favour as it would mean our avoiding free-scoring MK Dons at Wembley should we make it through the semi-final.

I hate the play-offs and I don’t want to go to Wembley. However, if the Town get there, I’ll go. And if Nathan Thompson is running round the pitch at “the home of football” at about 7pm on May 24 holding a trophy aloft, I will stop hating the play-offs - just for a minute or two at least.