Gillingham players are facing a test of their character admits the club’s leading scorer after another setback at the weekend.

The Gills suffered a ninth defeat of their League 2 campaign on Saturday at lowly Tranmere Rovers and will be looking to reverse their fortunes tomorrow (Tuesday) night with the visit of Wimbledon.

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Connor Mahoney scored Gills’ goal on Saturday from a stoppage-time free-kick, scant consolation in a 3-1 defeat, claiming his fourth of the campaign. Defeat left the Gills sitting ninth in the table.

“The quicker the (Wimbledon) game comes the better,” said the Gills’ set-piece specialist.

“We have some big players in the (dressing room), big characters. We need to come back in on Tuesday for the game and get three points.

“If we want to do anything this season, if we want to get where we think we should be, it is a big test of character for everyone.

“There are still plenty of games left, lots of highs and lows still for the season, we will dwell on (Saturday’s loss) for a little bit and then focus on Tuesday against Wimbledon and hopefully get three points.

“I am still positive. We will sit down and have a discussion together, it was a tough one. We won last Saturday (at Salford) and the gaffer said to us not to get too high when we win and don’t get too low.

“There are a lot of games left, a lot of football to be played, we just have to see where we are at the end of the season.”

The Gills have lacked consistency throughout the season, often following a win with at least one defeat. They need to pick up the points for the remainder of the season if they want to reach their minimum target of the play-offs, something Mahoney recognises.

He said: “We can’t keep doing this, we can’t win, lose, win, lose, we need to take the bull by the horns and put a run together and see where we are at the end of the season.

“It’s frustrating. If we want to be at the top end of the table we need to put together a couple of results on the bounce, you can’t be winning one, losing one, drawing one, we all know that.

“On Tuesday we are back in front of our fans. It was a disappointing one for everyone (on Saturday), especially the fans who travelled all that way, I want to thank them on behalf of me and the lads, I really appreciate it, hopefully Tuesday we will get three points.

“Thankfully it’s at Priestfield, we’re going to have good support there as we always do, we have done well there, we need to give the fans something to cheer about and hopefully we will do that.”

Mahoney is chipping in with the goals and assist but knows as a team they need to create better openings to have any chance of winning games while being less soft at the other end.

He said: “We need to show a bit more resilience when we do go 1-0 or 2-0 down, I don’t think it was good enough when we went 2-0 down, we need to show more resilience and fight back more.

“(The head coach) has only been in for a couple of weeks and you can see from the couple of weeks that he has been in that we have been on the ball a lot more, a lot of possession, we need to create more clear-cut chances, when we do get them we need to finish them.

“Within time a lot of that ball possession will hopefully turn into more clear-cut chances for us.”