AFC Fylde star Danny Rowe admits he is keeping one eye on the goal charts as he looks to fire the Coasters to promotion.
Rowe has been sensational since joining from Lincoln last summer and marked his 100th appearance for the club with his first goal in five games against Tamworth on Saturday.
The 27-year-old’s penalty at The Lamb Ground took his tally to 21 goals in the National League North, level with Boston United’s Dayle Southwell, and he is keen to beat his rival to the crown.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep an eye on the goalscoring charts,” said Rowe, who has 33 goals in all competitions this season. “That’s what I’m hoping to achieve on a personal level and I know it’s been said a million times but the main thing for me is getting promoted.
“The perfect season for me would be for the club to win promotion and for me to be the top scorer in the league. However, if I could only pick one then it would definitely be promotion.”
The Coasters have all but guaranteed their spot in this season’s play-offs but Rowe was not happy with his side’s performance in the 3-1 defeat at the weekend.
“I don’t know where to start with that performance. We started badly and went behind to a poor goal from our perspective.
“We managed to get ourselves back into the game and then throw it away straight away by conceding two goals in quick succession and that killed the game.
“They weren’t particularly good, we were just very poor. We didn’t create many chances and we didn’t perform. We never really got going.
Dave Challinor’s troops take on Harrogate Town this Saturday as Fylde celebrate the final league game at Kellamergh Park before the summer move to Mill Farm but Rowe is wary of the visitors.
“I was very impressed with Harrogate when we played them at their place earlier in the season. We came away with a point that overall we probably didn’t deserve. Like ourselves, they have been a bit up and down since then.
“We aren’t going into the match in the best of form but it will be a good test against another side that will most likely be in the play-offs too.
“It’s difficult to go up through the play-offs and it’s not the way we wanted to do it, but at the end of the day one of us is going to go up and hopefully it’s us.
“It’s going to be a lottery and always depends on who turns up on the day, but we want to start performing before we go into those games. Ideally we want to be on a bit of a run to take in to the play-offs.
“If we play like we did on Saturday then we won’t be going anywhere. We know how we can play and we need to get back to that as soon as possible.”