It’s a fair bet that everyone connected with Cheltenham Town will agree with Scott Flinders when he says: “These are exciting times.”

The 32-year-old has been an excellent last line of defence as the club have gone on a on a pre and post-Christmas run that has seen them unbeaten in six League Two games, a run that has catapulted them eight point clear of the drop zone.

Next up for Cheltenham is a trip to West Sussex on Saturday where they will play 17th-placed Crawley Town, who are one place and one point better off than Michael Duff’s resurgent side.

And even though it will be the club’s fifth game in two weeks, Flinders can’t wait for the game to kick off.

“We’re looking forward to playing every game with the run we’re on,” said the Rotherham-born goalkeeper. “Things have really turned in our favour. There’s been a lot of hard work behind the scenes and it’s paying off at the minute but we need to keep it up.”

Crawley won 1-0 at Cheltenham on the opening day of the campaign but will surely start as underdogs on Saturday despite their 2-0 New Year’s Day win over Colchester which ended a desperately poor run of form for Gabriele Cioffi’s men.

It’s all so different from the opening weeks of the season for Cheltenham of course. A very slow start saw manager Gary Johnson leave the club in August with former Cheltenham player Duff taking over in early September.

Even then there was no real upturn in results until the end of October although when the upturn did come it was worth waiting for, starting with the eye-catching 6-2 win over Arsenal’s youngsters in the Checkatrade Trophy.

That was on Tuesday 30th October and came three days after a 2-0 defeat at home to Stevenage in League Two.

And Flinders believes it was that defeat by Stevenage that sparked the turnaround in their fortunes.

“That was the big turning point,” he said. “We had to take a long, hard look at ourselves and we realised we could be in a real dogfight unless we changed something.

“We had a big meeting on the Monday – I think it was a players’ meeting and then the management joined in. A few home truths came out, we put to bed the things that were not going right.”

Since then they have won five and drawn four of their 10 league games and are also through to the third round of the Checkatrade Trophy – they host Oxford United on Tuesday.

“The lads have bought into what the gaffer has said on the training ground,” added Flinders. “It’s been hard work but the games have been coming thick and fast and that has given us a bit of momentum.”

And there have certainly been some impressive results along the way, not least the emphatic 4-1 success at Yeovil on New Year’s Day.

That was a result that obviously delighted Flinders as much as his team-mates but, because he’s a goalkeeper, a win is always that little bit more satisfying for him if there is a ‘nil’ in the goals against column.

“Yes, clean sheets are very important, they’re massive,” he admitted. “I’d have liked to have kept a few more even though the most important thing is to win.”

So it’s no surprise to hear him say that the standout game for him in Cheltenham’s recent run was the 3-0 success at Notts County in mid-November.

“That was really important,” continued Flinders. “That was a game where we really needed three points, not one, and fair play to the lads, they were really good that day.

“Since that game we’ve had a lot more confidence and we’ve played really well against some of the top teams in the division. The good thing is that we can win by playing football or by dogging it out when we’re not playing so well.

“Our best performance of the season, football-wise, was the 3-1 win against MK Dons on Boxing Day but then three days after that we came from 2-0 down against Forest Green to draw 2-2. We’ve got a great team spirit and we never give up.”

As Flinders says, these are exciting times to be involved with Cheltenham, but he has been around the game long enough to know that they can take nothing for granted in the weeks and months ahead.

He’s played well over 400 games in a career that has seen him play for a whole host of clubs including Crystal Palace in the Championship, Falkirk on loan in the Scottish Premier League and, primarily, Hartlepool United for whom he played over 250 games.

Now in his second season with Cheltenham, he is excited, although cautious, about the prospects for the second half of the current campaign.

“We’re going in the right direction but we’re still looking over our shoulders,” he said. “We’re only halfway through the season but if we keep this run going you never know what could happen.”