James Constable, Oxford United’s match-winner against Barrow on Saturday, described the three points at the Kassam Stadium as “massive”.

The U’s leading scorer bagged his 13th goal of the campaign from the penalty spot after being brought down by goalkeeper Stuart Tomlinson, and that proved the only goal of the game as Chris Wilder’s men recovered from last week’s Kidderminster setback with a hard-fought 1-0 triumph.

“Today was massive to get us back on track,” Constable said after the game.

“We’ll go to Forest Green with confidence now to hopefully get a result down there.

“We wanted to bounce back after the Kidderminster match and I think we showed today how desperate we were to do that.

“Hopefully we can kick on. These are the games we need to be winning.”

Although United had to grind out the win, and were not at their best, they still hit the woodwork three times, saw Tomlinson make an outstanding save from Jamie Cook, and also had both Cook and Jack Midson squander apparently good chances.

Barrow came into the game on a nine-match unbeaten run, and showed how difficult they were to beat, so Constable was just delighted that he had reacted quickly to a long ball forward to nip in before Tomlinson could get there, and he was then sent crashing to the ground.

“In this league you get a lot of defenders just switching off, maybe thinking it’s just going to run, especially with the conditions we had today.

“It was just a case of shutting everything down and maybe getting the rub of the green and luckily it came.

“It was nice for me. It was in that area where he couldn’t come with his hands and he got in a bit of a mess, so I was happy that he brought me down in the end.”

And the former Kidderminster and Shrewsbury striker is now fully back in the swing of being Oxford’s main penalty taker.

“I missed one and ended up letting one of the other lads have one and they missed and so it came back to me.

“And obviously I love to score goals and it’s nice from 12 yards to have a shot just direct with the goalie.”