JOHN Coleman and his Accrington Stanley side will be looking to ‘right a wrong’ tomorrow as they face the team that beat them in the League Two play-offs in 2011.

Stanley travelled to Stevenage three years ago unbeaten in their final 13 league games of the season, but the promotion dream ended when they lost both legs to Graham Westley’s side, who had finished four points below the Reds.

Coleman and Westley have both left their respective clubs since, only to return, with Westley back at Broadhall Way after an unsuccessful spell at Preston North End, and tomorrow will be the first time they have faced each other since he got the upper hand in 2011.

For Coleman the memories of a 2-0 defeat in the first leg, followed by a 1-0 reverse back in Lancashire five days later, are still strong.

“Going through the gates I’ll still shudder,” said Coleman. “We did great to get there. If I had my time over again I wouldn’t have been as gung ho going there. I’d try to do to them what they did to us here, kill the game and try to limit the damage and try to nick a win.

“But we were in such a great vein of form at the time and blowing everyone away and we felt invincible. I wasn’t going to deny the players. In hindsight it probably cost us but maybe this is a chance to right a little wrong.

“The players probably felt they didn’t do themselves justice. What you have to remember is that nine of that team had probably already left in their minds. They’d agreed terms with other teams. When that’s the case it’s very hard to focus.

“I had the chance to leave myself about six or seven weeks before and I knew we were going to get into the play-offs so there was no way I was going to jump ship. It can be a distraction and I know it must have been a distraction for the players but I know that they went out to win those games and I know that nobody was hurting more than them when we lost.”

Coleman and Westley are two of the more colourful characters in the Football League, and the Stanley boss doesn’t think his counterpart gets the credit he deserves.

In his second spell at the club Westley took Stevenage to successive promotions – from the Conference Premier to League One – but his 13 months in charge at Deepdale ended acrimoniously, with players critical of his methods.

“I can understand a lot of his thought processes,” said Coleman. “I know he’s very single minded and has been successful and people can talk about his methods and focus too much on them and not really his mentality or his work ethic.

“In my opinion people don’t give him enough credit for the success that he has had.”

Stevenage go into the game with a number of injury concerns, but Coleman still expects a tough game in Hertfordshire.

“I’m sure they’ll be able to field a strong starting eleven and a bench to cause us enough problems as it is,” he said. “What we have to do is focus on what we want to do to them and come up with a game plan.”