Hard to believe that is was 9 years ago but on this day in 2012 we were hosting Doncaster Rovers in a game that we had to win to keep up the momentum at the top of the Championship.

As it is international week and there is little current news to entertain us we are going to take a look back at what we were doing on 24th March 2012 as we marched back to the Premier League.

Doncaster Rovers where the visitors to St Mary's and a virtual full house crowd of 30, 209 packed into St Mary's to see if Saints could keep up the winning momentum.

We sat top of the table on 75 points with Reading 5 points behind and West Ham in 3rd on 68 points but with a game in hand. Brighton were in 4th on 61 points and with 8 games left it was turning into a 3 club shootout for the two automatic promotion spots.

Saints went into this game on the back of a 9 game unbeaten run with 7 wins and just 2 draws.

Doncaster arrived in the bottom two with only Pompey below them, they had sold their star striker Billy Sharp to us in January after he had put a dent in our promotion hopes by scoring the only goal in our 1-0 defeat up in Yorkshire.

But he would repay that by scoring both goals in our 2-0 win at St Mary's, although his old team put up stubborn opposition and it would be just before the hour mark before St Mary's erupted with the opening goal, on 75 minutes he made it safe and on we marched towards the Premier League.

Reading won as well, but West Ham could only draw so we were now 9 points clear of the play off spots.

However the Hammers would win their game in hand a few days later and the gap shortened to 6 points.

But this would be the last game before a mini slump, we would lose at Blackpool on the following weekend, draw with Pompey and then beat Palace on Easter Monday , but then we lost at home to Reading and the pendulum was starting to swing against us.

See what I had to say about the game back in 2012 using the link below

https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/news/16497/saints-v-doncaster

Photo: Action Images

WestSussexSaint added 20:00 - Mar 24 I think you are right. It is a slow news week!
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