Shrewsbury Town’s jubilant manager and players today looked ahead to a thrilling play-off campaign and declared: “The hard work starts again now.”

Preparations were today in full flow for a two-legged League Two play-off semi-final against Bury at the Prostar Stadium on Thursday (7.45pm) and at Gigg Lane next Sunday (12 noon).

A place at Wembley for the final on Saturday, May 23 will be at stake, with Rochdale and Gillingham also competing for the ultimate prize of promotion to League One.

Town booked their place in the play-offs with Saturday’s 2-1 success at Dagenham & Redbridge on a dramatic final afternoon of the regular season.

And manager Paul Simpson is now urging his team to continue their charge for promotion after knocking Dagenham out of seventh position.

“It’s what we have worked for and we are absolutely delighted,” said the Town boss.”But it starts again now. We wanted one game at Dagenham to take it to another two, possibly three.”We have done the first part but I don’t want to be in the play-offs just to make up the numbers.”If we play as we are capable of, we will give anybody a game.”Bury are the fourth best team in the League because they have got the fourth best points total.”We have to do the job properly.Stupid“I thought the performance there the other week (when Town lost 2-1 at Gigg Lane) was good but we gave two stupid goals away.”We want to try and get ourselves into a good position from the first game and take it to the second leg.”Meanwhile, skipper Graham Coughlan believes a repeat of Saturday’s performance would give Town an excellent chance of sealing promotion.”There were big, brave lads out there and that’s what we need for the next three games,” said the central defender”There is no point in getting to the play-offs if you are going to down tools.”The journey has just started. The easy part we have done, the hard part is in front of us now.”We have made the step into the play-offs now but let’s banish the ifs, buts and maybes because that has been the story of our season.”Let’s stand up to the challenge and take this football club forward.”Coughlan admitted adding a killer instinct in front of goal will be crucial to Town’s hopes.”If we can start taking our chances, we should see off many a team but we haven’t been that clinical and that’s maybe something we have to work on,” he added.”But I suppose I’m a killjoy and I’m looking for perfection. We were in training yesterday and the focus for the next two games is to get to Wembley.”

By James Garrison