ASHLEY Ward is desperate to avoid what could be a unique, as well as unwanted, double as he bids to add to his growing goals tally at Charlton tomorrow.

For the Rovers striker could finish as leading scorer for two clubs, Rovers and Barnsley, this season - just as he did for Crewe and Norwich in 1994-95 - but Norwich were relegated from the Premiership at the end of that campaign!

"I don't want to have egg on my face," said Ward.

"One of the main reasons I wanted to leave Barnsley was because I enjoyed my time in the Premier League and I chose to come here because I seriously didn't think we would go down.

"I could have gone to other clubs who were not in such a precarious position.

"But I still don't feel we will go down and, if that proves to be the case, I will be delighted with my decision.

"It's difficult to overstate the importance of tomorrow's game. It's also a game that, even if we don't win, we can still escape. But I don't think they could.

"Nerves do come into it, they are bound to. "It's more or less a cup final, possibly even more important than that because there could be more at stake."

Ward spent last season battling against relegation - unsuccessfully - with Barnsley ,but he stresses there s no magic formula for survival.

"People think you have some kind of secret because you have been there before, or that there is something you have learned," he said.

"But there's nothing I can tell the other players to change it.

"They are all professionals who will be giving 110 per cent and that is really the secret - that everybody is up for it on an occasion like this.

"The players are disappointed we are in this position. We want to survive this season so that we can start from scratch with the new manager and show we are a better team than the position we are in at the moment."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.