SWINDON Town head coach Ben Garner wants his players to rise to the occasion when the club takes on Port Vale in the League Two play-off semi-final second leg on Thursday.

Swindon can continue a magnificent season with a trip to Wembley should they avoid defeat at a place they have already claimed victory earlier in the year – Vale Park.

The pressure surrounding play-off games is widely known, but the Town boss revealed his squad has not shown signs of being affected by the pre-match tension.

Asked how he and his team have been coping with the heightened emotions of a play-off situation, Garner said: “These are the moments we’re in the game for. You want the big games; you want the big occasions.

“We’ve worked incredibly hard this season to get to this point, and you have to enjoy the process of going through it.

“If you just focus purely on results, it’s just nerves and thinking ‘what if?’ then you’re going to look back and regret it in years to come. I want the players to enjoy it, I want the staff to enjoy it.

“It’s a great challenge for us, it’s a great opportunity for us – we need to embrace that and go and perform to the levels I know we can.”

Despite Town winning the first leg, Garner was adamant his players could produce a far higher level of performance than they showed at home.

The Swindon head coach insisted he would not be changing too much from his tried-and-tested away-day plan in order to get the job done.

Stating he was not tempted to throw in a curveball for the fourth clash against Vale this season, Garner said: “We’ll adjust things, we’re not going with the same exact way of playing from Sunday.

“We’ve made changes in terms of what we think will work better in this game and what will help us.

“We had a way of playing in the away game there that worked very, very well – we have to learn from that.

“It’s about fine-tuning because we’re on a really good run of form and confidence is high.

“I think we’ve shown really good resilience in those games as well, we’ve not conceded many goals, and we’re looking a big threat in an attacking sense.

“We need to play to those strengths and perform the way I know we can – if we do that then I think we’ll be in a good place.”