James Constable fired Oxford United into the play-off places with a brilliant double against his old club Shrewsbury last night.

Constable took his tally for the season to 12 with two great left-foot finishes in the second half, as the U’s tamed the Shrews 3-1 at the Kassam Stadium to climb to seventh in npower League Two.

“I hadn’t scored for a couple of games so I was desperate to get back on the scoresheet,” he said afterwards.

“The fact that we got three points as well is even better.

“The first one I just tried to hit it as clean as I could, and the second one I was lucky to get in there really. There was a bit of indecision, and luckily for me, I got on the end of it.

“It would have been easy to have gone under after conceding the goal we did, but we fought back and created a number of chances.

“It’s important we kick on now and stay in those play-off positions.”

For Constable, there must have been extra pleasure to show the club that let him go what they were missing, even though he played that down.

“It’s not down to the people who are there now. They obviously thought I wasn’t right for them at that time, but it’s worked out better for me that I’m here and that tonight we’ve got the three points.”

United coach Andy Melville, who was sent out to do the post-match press conference by manager Chris Wilder, said: “I thought we were magnificent tonight from front to back.

“We were disappointed with their goal. Shrewsbury had a little bit of luck with the deflected goal, but we came back and started passing the ball, and I thought there was some excellent play out there. And great individual performances as well.

“The lads were spot on,” said the former Wales international defender. “They went about it in the right way, it was a good response from Saturday’s defeat at Northamp-ton.”

He added: “James Constable’s a real handful. As a defender, you know you’re in a game against him.”