John Rooney insists his previous miss wasn’t on his mind as he stepped up to take what turned out to be Barrow AFC’s winning penalty against Aldershot Town last Saturday.

Six months on from blazing over the bar in a similar scenario against Solihull Moors, Rooney held his nerve by going down the middle and snatched a 2-1 victory for the Bluebirds in the sixth minute of stoppage time.

It was the midfielder’s sixth goal of the season and his first since just before Christmas and it got AFC back on track ahead of tonight’s visit to second-placed Wrexham.

Rooney took the responsibility of taking what was their second penalty of the afternoon against the Shots, after Josh Kay’s tame effort had been saved by Jake Cole in the 86th minute.

“I’m confident in my own ability,” Rooney said. “I wasn’t under any pressure because I’ve taken plenty of penalties since I’ve been playing, so I was always confident stepping up.

“I wasn’t letting my last penalty faze me and obviously it’s just one of those things; people miss, but you step up again and take another one. Josh wanted the first one, so he stepped up to take it because he felt confident enough to take it, so you’ve got to take off your hat for that as well.”

Despite getting the win, Barrow were not happy with manner of their performance against their lowly opponents and they were off the pace for long periods of the second half, especially.

They’ll be hoping they can return to the standards they reached in their previous midweek match, against Leyton Orient last week, when they travel to North Wales, except they’ll want a different outcome.

On their struggles against Aldershot, Rooney said: “We didn’t perform the way we should, but we got the three points.

“The goalie performed well on Tuesday and we should have had the three points, and we lost.

“Obviously, we had that little bit of luck by getting the late penalty on Saturday, but it was nowhere near good enough, the overall performance.”

Rooney will be heading back to one of his former clubs when he lines up at the Racecourse Ground, where Wrexham will be keen to bounce back, after a 1-0 defeat at Orient knocked them off the top of the National League.

Rooney said: “Wrexham’s a great club, I enjoyed my time there. I’m looking forward to going there and hopefully we give a better account of ourselves.

“We’ve always played well against the top teams and I think their pitch will suit the way we want to play, so it should be a good game and I think the lads will be up for it.”