Jefferson Lake’s Cheltenham v Cobblers preview: Town’s destiny in their own hands

The Easter period is one in which a religious holiday is used as an excuse for people to gorge themselves on chocolate – quite how the two came to be linked is anyone’s guess.

It is also a time, as any football supporter knows, where great plot twists in promotion challenges or relegation battles can take place.

Even before the trip to Whaddon Road, the weekend – in which two fixtures are pressed into four days, creating plenty of scope for the shuffling and reordering of league positions – has been an eventful one for Northampton Town.

They kicked it off with a late win over Torquay United to put the pressure on Burton Albion to maintain their own excellent home form the following day against Chesterfield.

Perhaps that pressure was too much for the Brewers, who fell to a 1-0 loss under the Spireites’ sword that means Town go into the second round of the Easter double-header in third place in npower League Two and in full control of their destiny.

Win the remaining six games, and league one football will come to Sixfields next season. It’s as simple as that.

For the first time this season the team is in the automatic promotion places and cannot be caught by teams below them unless they slip up on their way to the finish line (they went third after winning 2-1 at Aldershot in January but Cheltenham and Rotherham both had games in hand, and Town fell out a week later after losing 2-0 at Gillingham).

Their destiny is in their own hands and with that comes a new pressure for these players, who have shown themselves to be fairly well equipped with a recent growing weight of expectation on their shoulders.

The game at Cheltenham is huge and although it is only the first of what will be six huge games between now and the end of the season, it could represent an important chapter in the campaign storyline.

Four of those games are away from home, a sequence that will test the team’s recent improvements on the road and ultimately decide whether they are promoted outright or if they have to go through the nerve-shredding experience of the play-offs.

For many months now, Aidy Boothroyd has spoken about his side being in the pack, waiting to find an extra level and make their move.

They are halfway to doing so in the crucial Easter period and now have a very difficult Gloucestershire mountain stage in which the pull away from the peloton.

Easter, as the old cliché goes, has been crucial so far and may just prove to be the defining point of what is turning into an intriguing and excellent season.