Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt is delighted with John Rooney’s improvement this season after the midfielder continued his purple patch in last Saturday’s 2-0 victory against Maidenhead United.

Rooney’s penalty was his seventh goal in five games and it took his season’s tally to nine, just one off his total from last season, where his final-day double at Gateshead took him into double figures.

Along with Scott Quigley, the 28-year-old has fired the Bluebirds’ superb run of five consecutive victories that has led to them rocketing up the National League table from the bottom four to seventh.

It is that kind of form Evatt will want to see more of from his side when they travel to league leaders Bromley this weekend, but he can be assured that they’ll travel down to south London full of confidence.

Evatt said: “He’s been outstanding and he’s improving, which is great to see, and to have nine goals at this stage of the season is excellent. If he had scored that goal at the end, it would have been a wonder goal and we need to keep going now - there’s no resting on our laurels.

“There’s a lot of hard work to be done. We have another game on Saturday to plan for, a big game at Bromley, who are going well in this division.

“We want to keep this run going. It breeds confidence and if we keep winning games and shooting up this table then hopefully the crowds will keep coming back in their numbers.”

September ended up being the month where Barrow got it right in both penalty areas, with a better goal return being matched up with a more resolute defence.

After leaking 16 goals in their first nine games - six of which were lost - AFC have only been breached twice in their current winning run, which is their best since January 2014.

Evatt believes the whole team deserve credit for the way things have tightened up at the back, saying: “You have to defend from the front and we are defending from the front.

“The more time you give footballers, the easier if gets and, especially with direct teams, if you give the opposition time to get their heads up and pick long passes, it becomes difficult for our back three.

“But the more pressure we can get on the ball higher up the pitch, the quality into their front players will certainly stop and hopefully we can pick up the second balls and dominate, which I though we did in the second half.

“The game plan worked excellently after the first 20 minutes - I thought we we slow starters, but we built into the game and won quite comfortably in the end.”