A DEFENSIVE dilemma faced Luke Williams in early February as Michael Doughty was forced to fill in as an emergency centre back for a midweek trip to Port Vale.

A 1-0 defeat followed at Vale Park before Town drew another blank in a goalless draw at Gillingham but from there, the tide began to turn.

Williams oversaw Swindon’s best run of the season as they recorded four straight victories to climb the table – results that convinced chairman Lee Power that Williams was the man to lead Town full-time.

A thumping 4-1 success away at struggling Colchester United kicked things off as Nicky Ajose and loanee Doughty both struck twice.

Top scorer Ajose went one better in the next match, netting a hat-trick as Town snatched a late 3-2 success at home to Blackpool – a game that saw Jamie Sendles-White make his debut after Town had bolstered their defensive ranks by offering the Northern Ireland youngster a deal until the end of the season.

Ajose and Doughty were on target once again as Swindon rounded off February with a 2-1 comeback win at Peterborough before Jonathan Obika came to the party with both goals as March began with a 2-0 triumph at home to Doncaster and talk began to turn to a push towards the play-offs.

Little over a week later, Williams was rewarded for the turnaround with a permanent position as Town chief. Clearly seeing him as the man to lead Town into the future, Power handed Williams a five-year deal as head coach, finally confirming what had seemed an inevitability for the preceding two months.

However, that only served as a kiss of death for the team as their winning run was ended in their next match, with a 2-2 draw at home to Millwall kicking off a run of nine matches without victory. Doughty struck a stoppage-time equaliser after Ajose had netted a penalty as Town fought back from two goals down.

The Red Army rallied in the next match as Town took their largest away following of the season to Coventry. Nearly 2,500 supporters made the trip to the Ricoh in response to a campaign led by TrustSTFC but the team failed to respond in a drab goalless draw.

A first defeat in eight followed but that only served as the start of an Easter Holiday horror show. First, promotion-chasing Wigan ripped them apart with a 4-1 thrashing at the County Ground but that compared little to the embarrassment of a 6-0 capitulation at Scunthorpe on Easter Monday.

Those results would bring the unlikely play-off push to a shuddering to a halt as Town began to look worryingly over their shoulder at the drop zone rather than putting pressure on the teams above.