Ben Brereton became the first Rovers player in five seasons to clock up half a century of appearances during one campaign.

Brereton featured in all but five of Rovers’ 55 matches across the 2022/23 campaign, finishing with 16 goals in all competitions.

The 24-year-old started 39 Championship matches, with a further four substitute appearances, meaning he missed only three league games.

That included being an unused substitute for the 3-1 win at QPR in February, the first time he has been in a matchday squad but not played any minutes since April 2021.

Brereton started Rovers’ first 25 league games before missing the 4-0 defeat to Rotherham United in January to attend the birth of his son.

Alongside his 43 Championship appearances, he played in four of the FA Cup ties, missing the Leicester City win through suspension, and made substitute outings in three of the four Carabao Cup ties.

It makes Brereton the first person to reach the haul of 50 appearances since Richie Smallwood in 2017/18.

Smallwood was an ever-present in the league as Rovers won promotion back to League One, as well as featuring in six cup matches, taking his tally to 52 for that season.

There has been only one ever-present in the league since, that being goalkeeper Christian Walton in 2019/20.

Ryan Hedges joined Brereton on 43 league appearances for the season, but his were split up between 27 starts and 16 substitute appearances.

He made 48 in all competitions, the same as Tyrhys Dolan and Lewis Travis.

Dolan was Rovers’ most used substitute, with 22 appearances off the bench in all competitions. The 21-year-old is now up to 125 games for Rovers, 65 of which have been off the bench.

Harry Pickering and Tyler Morton both featured in 40 Championship matches, and 46 in all competitions, with Dom Hyam (42) and Sam Szmodics (41) just behind them.

For the second successive season Sam Gallagher finished on 39 appearances, while Hayden Carter (36), Bradley Dack (33) and Joe Rankin-Costello (32) all played in more than 30 games.

However, only five players (Brereton, Travis, Pickering, Hyam and Morton) started 30 or more Championship games, half the number of the previous season.

Callum Brittain (29), Thomas Kaminski (29), John Buckley (28) and Scott Wharton (28) were the other players to feature in more than half of Rovers’ 55 games.

Kaminski and Buckley both saw the biggest drop-off from last season, though injury played a part, as they made 16 fewer appearances than they did in 2021/22. Buckley’s league starts dropped from 39 to 17.

Of those at the club for the entirety of last season, the biggest winners were Joe Rankin-Costello, up from 10 appearances to 32, while Aynsley Pears had only made seven appearances in a Rovers shirt before clocking up 26 this season.

Jake Batty and Louie Annesley both made their debuts in the Carabao Cup, in what proved to be their sole appearances of the season, while Harry Leonard finished with four substitute outings.

Clinton Mola and Dilan Markanday, both six, were the other players not to reach double figures, while George Hirst clocked up 11 before his departure in January.

In their debut seasons in senior football, Adam Wharton, Ash Phillips and Jake Garrett made 22, 14 and 13 appearances respectively, while in his first full season, Jack Vale managed 22. 

In all, 30 players were used by Rovers, 11 of which through the club’s Academy.

Four were players on loan, while the rest were signed in transfers windows of summer 2017 (Dack), summer 2018 (Brereton), January 2019 (Annesley), summer 2019 (Gallagher), summer 2020 (Kaminski, Pears, Ayala, Dolan), January 2021 (Pickering), summer 2021 (Edun), January 2022 (Hedges, Markanday) and summer 2022 (Brittain, Hyam, Szmodics).