AS a footballer there are two ways you can go when you find yourself out of the team and on the bench.

You can either dig your head and bury it in the sand and disappear – or you can put your chin out, work harder and, when you do get your opportunity, make sure you take it.

MORE TOP STORIES:

I’m not surprised but I’m glad to see that Craig Conway did the latter on Saturday.

When Craig joined us in January almost immediately it felt like he’d been with us for a long time.

He was creating goals and scoring goals – he was absolutely flying.

He settled ever so quickly into the club and he was fantastic.

But by his standards he had a bad game against Derby and he found himself among the substitutes against Fulham on Saturday.

Sometimes you get away with having a bad game.

But unfortunately for Craig, Ben Marshall is in fantastic form and when Gary Bowyer decided to go with two more defensive central midfielders, he was the one who missed out.

But the way he performed off the bench said to me, ‘I’m going to prove I’m going to get back in the starting line-up’.

It’s funny that Craig would miss out to Ben because he was originally brought in to the club in January when Ben suffered a bad injury.

But, as I said in my column last week, having the likes of Ben, Craig and Tom Cairney to call on now means we are no longer as reliant on Jordan Rhodes and Rudy Gestede.

They can strike a ball and score a goal from distance and give opposition defenders and midfielders something to think about.

Ben has been like a new signing.

But of course Jordan was once against the match-winner against Fulham.

It was a fantastic win.

In the lead up to the game I was just hoping their manager wouldn’t be sacked because I knew it would change their whole outlook.

Obviously he did end up being sacked and so it came as no surprise to me that we had to really battle.

But I don’t care how you get them, if you can go away from home and get a clean sheet and get a win, which we rarely do on our trips to the capital, it is massive.

The win means we took six points out of the games with Wigan, Derby and Fulham.

It is a very good return and now let’s hope we can beat Watford on Saturday and make it nine.

I’m quite happy where we are in the table, just on the shirttails of the top teams, now we’ve just got to keep progressing.