Swindon Town will be without their captain, Ollie Clarke, when they make the trip to Gillingham in League Two on Tuesday.

With nine games of the season remaining, Swindon know that victory against The Gills will be pivotal for their fading hopes of automatic promotion, and also just to turn around a difficult patch of form that has seen them win once in six matches.

But they will have to win there for the first time since 1986 without Clarke, after he came off injured against Milton Keynes Dons.

Having turned in a captain's display against MK Dons, Clarke had to come off after 78 minutes with what was believed to be a calf issue, and will not be fit to play three days later.

Ian Holloway said: "No, no one is back, and it is worse than that, because we have lost one, the skipper is out, so somebody will come in and we will see what we can do.

"I am not sure what it is [that he has done], I think it might be utter exhaustion, if you look at the mileage he has done over the last few months to catch up, he has played every single game, and his [running] numbers were through the roof on Saturday, I thought he was absolutely outstanding.

"That was a bitter blow when he came off after his calves blew up. I only put him back there because Taf [Ryan Tafazolli] was struggling. Luckily he is alright.

Elsewhere in the team, Tafazolli said that he feels fine to play after his first game back at the weekend after five out.

The defender has sometimes struggled to play consistently due to smaller injuries, and Holloway is hoping he will be fit enough to play twice in a matter of days.

He said: "We will have to see. I have got a stretcher and I have got some crutches for him, in case he needs them, but I am going to have to bandage him up and chuck him out there.

"You are in the lap of the Gods."

Michael Olakigbe will not be available for this game, although there is hope he will be alright to take on Tranmere Rovers this weekend.

Tom Wilson-Brown is back running at Leicester City's training ground, and he should be fit by the end of the season, but how much he would be able to play remains up in the air.

Gillingham boss Gareth Ainsworth said that they will be a stronger team when they take on Swindon Town after some heavy defeats.

Swindon head to Priestfield to face a Gillingham side that have just played Milton Keynes Dons and Cambridge United in the last week, conceding ten goals in the process with two heavy defeats.

Ainsworth said that there would be no issue with picking the players up, and the added incentive of a rivalry was perfect.

Speaking in his post-match press conference, he said: “We are hitting rock bottom here, and we have got to find a way, because Tuesday is a big game against Swindon at home.

“Listen, it is going to be a really tough one, because it is Swindon and they will come and want to get one over on their rivals.

“We were very good at their place, we should have won that game, we had the chances to win that game, we didn’t have the chances to win any game today.

“We need to create chances on Tuesday, we need to be better at defending set pieces, second balls, balls forward that just seem to carve through us at times.

“It is my job to put it right, it will be a tough day tomorrow watching the video and trying to pick the bones out.

“But I will get this team up for Tuesday, no problem at all, and I am looking forward to it, because it is a derby, and I know how much it means to the fans.

“For the players, what a way that would be to turn this horrendous form around."

Ainsworth added that he did not believe all of his players were suited to play under him, which was hitting especially hard during an injury crisis.

He said: “Every player in this squad is not a Gareth Ainsworth player, and next season I will make sure that they are, and I will put my name to everything.

“I am sure [the experienced players] will be [fit], and I am sure that they will want to play, because it is Swindon.

“I need to get my best players on the pitch for Swindon Town, and it is tough without the players who have played all season.

“Some of the boys haven’t trained, and I didn’t want to put them on. Garath McCleary was a risk, Omar [Beckles], Bradley [Dack], and Armani [Little], but everyone has come through that good, and the team will be stronger for Tuesday.”

Ian Holloway said he took huge pride as Swindon Town got back to winning ways with a 2-0 victory over Gillingham.

It was a first league double over Gillingham for Swindon since the 1930/31 season, when Harry Morris was leading the team, but they made hard work of it.

Their out-of-form hosts made most of the running, but Aaron Drinan broke the 20-goal mark in the second half, before Fletcher Holman notched a massive win for Town.

Holloway said that it was Town's sharp shooting that got them over the line, but he felt that everyone put in a big shift for the team.

He said: "[What did you like most about the performance?] The goals.

"Didn't we need that? It's a great feeling to win again, and get that behind us, and let's get on with the next one.

"There's only eight left, can we win all eight? If not, can we win seven? It might need to be that sort of total. And why not?

"And then if not, let's see how many we can get, because we don't want it to peter out.

"When you look at the effort that they gave, you look at the saves Connor [Ripley] had to make, two of them, you look at the blocks that we've made, and you look at headers.

"[Ryan Tafazolli] had one, and we didn't look like we're going to concede, I don't think, with a big header editor.

"Well done to everyone tonight; we needed everyone to do well, and everyone did.

"The people who came [in the away end] made a huge difference. I am really proud of them this evening, and I am really proud of everyone.

"The quality of the finishes has made the difference, and I think I can remember we did that at home. They had a lot of chances in that game, too.

"He was talking about how they need to take them as clinically as we did. So we've managed to do that.

"We've scored four, and they've scored none, and we've taken six points off of them."

Making only one change from the win over Milton Keynes Dons, as Billy Bodin replaced the injured Ollie Clarke, Holloway exaplained what he hoped to get from the team.

He said: "I tried to pick the same sort of team as I had on Saturday because I felt we played well.

"I am just very pleased, and I'm very relieved, and let's see if we can take that, get that feeling going again."

"I tried to keep some of my powder dry. I wanted to out-football them in the first half, which is brave, because I know his team, Gareth [Ainsworth]'s team, will be smart in because they got done by five twice here in a row. I know he's a winner.

"I used what I felt was right to try and get it, to try and play.

"We couldn't get our full backs high enough up, so we knew we had a switch to get [Ollie] Palmer and Fletcher Holman on, and we hoped that would do it."

Tom Nichols said that Swindon Town would be doing everything that they can to catch the top three in League Two during the final eight games.

Victory against Gillingham, courtesy of some clinical finishing from Aaron Drinan and Fletcher Holman, saw Swindon right the ship and start looking back towards the top of the division.

Swindon will need some help from the teams above them if they are going to achieve automatic promotion, and, at present, Bromley, Milton Keynes Dons, and Cambridge United are in great form, with none of them having lost a single game in the last eight.

However, with eight games remaining, Swindon can still get to 90 points if they can win all of them, and no team has failed to go up in the top three with 81 or more points in League Two in the last eight completed seasons.

Following victory over his old club Gillingham, Nichols said they knew it would be a challenge, but the team will give everything to close the gap and finish as strongly as they can.

He said: “It's going to be difficult. I mean, Bromley have one defeat in 25, Cambridge are around that, and MK are the same, so they're in quite ridiculous form, those three.

“We can catch them. Hopefully, they'll have a blip, but we just need to pick up as many points as we can, and if it is playoffs, then we need to be in good form going into that.

“But we're here to win every game and try and get back in that top three, because we're not a million miles away. Is it three points? They have got a game in hand. So anything could happen.

“Football's crazy, and teams go from being unbeatable to losing three or four in a row, so we just have to keep going.

“We're not looking too far ahead, to be honest. We've obviously dropped down a little bit, and we just needed to get back on the horse and feel like we've done that tonight.

“A clean sheet was very important for us, and two really good goals on top of that.”

Having won just once in five games leading into the trip to Priestfield, a stadium Swindon have had historical struggles with, Nichols said the team knew it was important just to get back on the horse.

He said: “We knew it was going to be a tough game. I mean, they're off the back of two bad results, so they're not just going to roll over and lie down.

“We knew it was going to be tight, and we knew we had to be clinical with our chances, and we definitely were.

“We knew we had to defend our box really well, and the boys at the back were brilliant.

“Rips [Connor Ripley] made a few excellent saves in the first half. So that was what we expected, a really tough game, and one we had to come out on the right side of.”

ByBen Prater and Sue Davies, BBC Radio Wiltshire

A town where "so much is going on" should become known for its creativity, locals have said.

Swindon in Wiltshire is one of nine locations vying to become the UK's City of Culture for 2029.

If successful, the town could receive £10m of government funding which would go towards supporting its arts and events.

"There's so much going on in Swindon and you just need to find it," Rod Hebden, CEO of the Swindon Culture Collective said.

"If you think there's nothing going on in Swindon, you just need to get out more," he told BBC Radio Wiltshire.

More from Wiltshire

The City of Culture competition is designed to "recognise local visions and voices" to boost grassroots creativity, widen participation in the arts and bring about new investment and tourism.

Swindon, a town, is eligible to enter the competition's city category due to its population of 222,000.

Mark Powell, artistic director of the Prime Theatre, hopes Swindon will be able to "rear its head" and shout about its success as a result of the bid.

He added: "The people [sic] that applied - Bristol, Plymouth, Exeter - those are massive places which do culture very well and very visibly.

"Swindon does culture very well but very invisibly, and this could make the big difference."

The Wiltshire town is up against Blackpool, Sheffield, Ipswich, Milton Keynes, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth, Wrexham and Inverness, with a shortlist to be announced later this year.

Each place longlisted will receive £60,000 to develop its application, which must be completed by summer.

Swindon Borough Council is working with the not-for-profit Swindon Culture Collective on its bid.

Marina Strinkovsky, cabinet member for place-making and planning, said being longlisted for UK City of Culture was "an extraordinary moment" for the town, which "belongs to every artist, volunteer, young producer, community group and cultural organisation that has poured their energy into telling Swindon's story".

She added: "We're a place built by thinkers, makers and innovators and today's news shows that the rest of the country is beginning to see what we've known all along."

The final winner of the UK City of Culture 2029 will be announced in winter.

Get in touch

Tell us which stories we should cover in Wiltshire

Contact form

Contact form

Follow BBC Wiltshire on , external, , external and , external. Send your story ideas to us on email or via .

Related topics

More on this story

Related internet links