PAOLO Di Canio was pleased to see his players reward the fans who gave up their Friday nights to help clear the County Ground pitch of snow with three points against Shrewsbury.

Around 200 members of the public joined forces with office staff and even Di Canio himself to help shift the white stuff off the covers at SN1, allowing the game to take place.

At the end of a trying week for all involved with the Robins, the Italian was delighted by the community spirit shown by the volunteers and was happy that his squad put a mediocre first-half performance behind them to complete a thoroughly satisfying 2-0 victory.

“I told them ‘you have to give more because yesterday there was a fantastic effort from the fans to show their passion’. I said I wouldn’t accept if they gave less because if they didn’t prepare themselves for some rumours, even if it is human, I don’t accept it,” he said.

“The best way to get something from your job is to give your best, even if there are rumours. I said that even if something goes wrong, it’s not the case for us. What does it mean to play, lose or drop? We have the best advantage in every situation – if we have a healthy club or bad financial problems, which is not the case at the moment.

“If you’re doing well there are clubs that want you. I went with facts, for their career. The final word was ‘if you don’t care about this, you have to think about the fans’. On Friday there was a little population with kids and they pushed for two hours. For me it was an emotional moment because it gave me the real value of what can happen.

“The simple word from them was ‘we are here because tomorrow we want to watch the game, we want to watch you’, so you have to listen to this in your heart.

“At the beginning it wasn’t easy because of the previous situation at the club, two days of ‘financial, administration’. I told them it is not true because it is a bad word.

“In the second half their pure and genuine values came out. They are good guys, in the second half they did their best and they paid back the price to the fans.”