Robbie Matthews is confident he and strike partner Jon Shaw can fire Crawley’s play-off charge, even if it means upsetting his home town club.

The pair are due to start up front for the first time at Broadfield tomorrow when Reds entertain struggling Salisbury.

Matthews joined Crawley on loan from the Whites a month ago and admits it will be strange trying to put one over the club for whom he has made more than 200 appearances.

The 26-year-old has played for Salisbury since youth-team days and admits he would still be there helping them fight a relegation battle were it not for their financial problems.

Matthews had a loan spell at Havant and Waterlooville either side of Christmas, returned to Wiltshire to make just one more appearance before joining Crawley in time to make his debut against Oxford in their last home game.

He said: “I had a knee injury last March which meant at the start of this season my fitness wasn’t as good as it should have been.

“So I was put out on loan to work on my match fitness. I came back after seven weeks, played one game for Salisbury and when I heard Crawley were interested I jumped at the chance.

“I had mixed feelings about leaving Salisbury. I was born there and still live there but the club were having financial difficulties and for once I decided to put myself first.

“I do keep in touch with some of the lads there and I play snooker with Rob Sinclair and Brian Dutton but I am totally focused on getting a win for Crawley. It will be a tough game because they are fighting for their lives but I am just going to treat it like any other game and just give it 100%.”

Matthews was not the only frustrated Crawley fan who watched Monday’s FA Trophy exit against another of the clubs he has played for this season.

Cup-tied after turning out for Havant in an earlier round, he saw Reds dominate for long spells and miss several chances before two mistakes led to a 2-0 defeat.

“I thought we should have won,” he admitted. “The pitch at Havant can be quite tricky and sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce as you would expect and that is what happened for their first goal. But we did have more chances and we need to be hitting the target more often with those.

“Obviously we are all frustrated and disappointed but (assistant manager) Paul Raynor told us at training on Tuesday that we need to stick together, work hard and just concentrate on bouncing back in the next game.”

Matthews and Shaw are Reds’ first-choice front pair while Jamie Cook continues his recovery from injury but tomorrow’s game will be the first they have started together even though Shaw has been at the club for six weeks and Matthews a month.

However, there were signs in the 4-4 draw against Ebbsfleet that they could forge a productive partnership.

“I have played in practice matches with Jon and we seem to be linking up really well,” said Matthews. “He is a similar sort of player to me. He likes to run off flicks and so do I. If you have someone running off the big man and picking up second balls it works.”

The partnership may take some time to bed down but with another 18 games and 54 points to play for there is time for the pair to gel and help Reds make the play-offs after a disappointing run of one win in their last six league matches.

“We can still make the play-offs,” insisted Matthews. “We have been going through a bit of a bad spell but we have had many players out injured or unavailable and we still have them to come back in.

“It is the reason I came to Crawley – I want to push myself and if I could help get the club into League football it would be brilliant.”