Barnsley: Cheltenham visits '˜more than just a day at the races' for Reds

The Reds’ players were given Tuesday off to enjoy the opening day of the four-day horse racing extravaganza.

After playing three games in seven days, the downtime will have done the players good heading into today’s tough trip to Norwich City.

“It’s a different experience, you have some good banter with the lads and it’ll only bring us closer as a group,” admitted Scowen, whose talks over a contract extension at the club are still ongoing.

“I think that these days out are very important, you get to see a different side to people that you don’t normally see and that can only help with what we do on the pitch.

“It was good for some of the boys, not so good for the others.

“I’m one of the not so good, but it was a good day out. I think Ryan Williams was the biggest winner.

“Ryan Williams got a tip, put it on the wrong horse and he won. It was a good bonding experience for all the lads.”

The Reds attention has firmly been on the Canaries since their day out earlier in the week.

Head coach Paul Heckingbottom was handed a welcome boost as captain Marc Roberts was deemed fit to play after tweaking his ankle last weekend.

After beating one of the pre-season promotion favourites 2-1 back in December, Scowen is eager to do the double over the managerless play-off chasers.

He added: “They are one of the biggest clubs in the league.

“We’ll go there looking to give our best performance like we did at home against them, all the boys will be up for this and we’ll go to try and get the three points.

“They’ve got Premier League players so to test ourselves against them is always nice and if we perform the way we have been, but be ruthless as well, we’ll come away with a good result.”