Barry Roche

Article Courtesy of the Green Un's correspondant Phil Tooley.

This article was produced prior to Saturdays trip to Accrington.

One of the great heroes from the superb 2-1 win at Paul Ince's Milton Keynes Dons two weeks ago was 25 year old Irishman Barry Roche.

Certainly he was not the busiest Chesterfield player on the day. He wasn't even the busiest keeper! However manager Lee Richardson summed up the vital last gasp intervention made by his big No.1 saying: "I thought that the MK Dons' keeper was their best player on the day, but our goalkeeper pulled off the save of the match at the end."

Roche's stoppage time save, a full length dive to the left to palm out a header from Danny Swailes, rebounded out to home skipper Keith Andrews who bundled the ball into the net to spark off great scenes of excitement and decibels of The Fratellis over the tannoy as the Dons followers celebrated.

Fortunately referee Phil Joslin spotted that Andrews had punched the ball into the net and as the DJ sheepishly faded out the Frats, the offender was booked and Big Barry quietly took the resulting free kick as the celebrations switched from one end of the stadium to the other.

The three points were in the bag and Roche had played every bit as much a part in the victory with that one moment of brilliance as scorers Felix Bastians or Jamie Ward had.

The keeper himself revealed the part his manager played in that moment: "In recent weeks, I've not had an awful lot to do but the gaffer spoke to me about the need to concentrate for 90 minutes and in the game at MK Dons, I had very little to do but when called upon at the end, I made the save."

And on the subsequent rebound: "We all instantly looked towards the linesman and one of the lads said he pointed towards the referee as though he wasn't going to give it and the ref hesitated and we all wondered what was going on, we knew he's punched it in and it was hearts in the mouth stuff for a few seconds."

The win at the league leaders was Spireites sixth travelling win of the season, add to that two draws - both at play off placed clubs in Chester City and Darlington - and just a solitary away defeat (Notts County), it means that 20 of Chesterfield's points have come on the road, a fantastic reward, the most fruitful in League Two.

What does Roche have to say about that? "We've been dominating teams at home but we've not been killing them off whereas we went away to the league leaders, score a couple of goals, dominate them for long periods of time and we can't really put our finger on why we're not getting results like that at home."

"It's not the case that we've been playing poorly, we've played really, really well but we've just been letting teams back into it and we've got to rectify that."

The ex Nottingham Forest player, who's Dad was a goalkeeper for League of Ireland side Bray Wanderers, is keeping himself busy off the park as well. He explains: "About two months ago, I started a degree course in sports journalism at Stoke. A football career doesn't go on forever and we have enough spare time on our hands to be able to plan for the future."

It's not a correspondence type course; "I'm at University from 3 until 9 on Mondays and on Thursdays 3 until 7, so I'm in quite a lot. I'm also doing work experience every week at my local newspaper, the Nottingham Evening Post, so it's quite full on. It's not the coffee making and photocopying sort of work experience, to date I've been there five or six weeks and I've had several pieces published so it's been productive as well as enjoyable, a great experience."

He also explains one new reason why he has to concentrate for the full 90 minutes of the game: "We have to do match reports on the games we play in afterwards, that's enjoyable even though it's hard work. I'd like to think I'm getting there!"