AS the final furlong of a pulsating play-off push gathers legs, Forest Green boss Mark Cooper has challenged his rivals to catch his side if they can.

With four games to go, Cooper’s side look a racing certainty to extend their season beyond 46 games.

Rovers rubber-stamped their place in the play-offs after second-half strikes from Christian Doidge and Joseph Mills ended relegation threatened Macclesfield’s five-game unbeaten streak.

Doidge pounced on 56 minutes - volleying in a pin-point Mills free-kick for his 13th goal of the season and Mills wrapped the game up with a sumptuous free-kick with two minutes to go.

“We want to win as many games as we can and we have four to play, so let’s see what happens, said Cooper.

“We have a cushion of seven points with our goal difference, so the other teams have got to go for it to catch us and we’re going to try and win every game.”

In a tepid encounter, Cooper admitted he wasn’t happy with his side’s performance, but insisted the points were paramount.

He added: “At this stage of the season, I suppose the priority is to get as many points as you can.

“It’s nice to play well as well, but we weren’t particularly fluent our forwards were a little bit sluggish, apart from probably Junior Mondal, but if you look at the results, we’re in a good position and it was important we got the three points.

“We kept a clean sheet and were defensively sound and never felt we were in any danger of losing the game, but I was disappointed in our build up play – at times we were a bit cumbersome and our passing was a little bit slow.

“People expected Macclesfield to turn up with horns coming out of their head and lie down and give us three points, but put it into perspective, they went to Lincoln and drew, 1-1 and we’ve just won 2-0.

“The only way they would score was a ball into Harry Smith and maybe a first or second contact would lead to a goal, but we managed it well.”

Meanwhile, manager Sol Campbell blamed a sapping 3-2 win over Exeter City as a mitigating factor in his side’s defeat, he said: “Tuesday was emotional for the lads, playing another away game after was difficult - energy levels are not as high.

“The lads put a lot of effort into Tuesday night and it showed with fatigue here and there.

“But they didn’t play us off the park, we went toe to toe and it came down to a couple of set plays.

“We didn’t really trouble the keeper, headers weren’t really on it."