TOM Cairney has hailed the fitness of his Blackburn Rovers team-mates after they turned on the style in the closing stages of the 3-1 win at the City Ground on Saturday.

Rovers were 1-0 down with 24 minutes to play against Nottingham Forest, but they scored three times in 11 matches to turn the game on its head.

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And it could easily have been more as Rovers swarmed forward in the closing stages, with Cairney seeing an injury-time effort saved when he was one on one with Karl Darlow.

“We’re a young side, we’re young, energetic, we’re fit,” said Cairney.

“As you saw in the second half on Saturday, we were running until the end, so to come here and be the first team to win here, it’s no easy place to come, there were 25,000 there on Saturday, so to play like we did in front of that is a big achievement and it can only fill us with confidence going on.”

The visitors went in 1-0 down at the break, but Cairney, who was making his 50th league appearance for the club, said Gary Bowyer had told the players that they could turn it around in the second 45 minutes.

“He just said we were playing in patches,” said the former Hull City man, “but he knows we didn’t get anywhere near our capabilities really, he knows we always finish strong, second half we always get stronger because I suppose we are so young we are fitter than most teams, and we ran until the end and the amount of chances we did create in the last 20 minutes was frightening really.”

Rovers’ victory was the first time that Forest had been beaten at the City Ground this season, and it moved Bowyer’s side to within one point and two places of the play-off positions.

It was a second straight victory and they are now four games unbeaten since the reverse at Rotherham at the end of September.

“It was massive,” said Cairney of Saturday’s win, “to come to one of the Championship favourites, they’ve spent £10million in the summer, and to put in a performance like this is massively pleasing.

“From my point of view I think it’s been coming all season with the chances we’ve created, to score three goals is a great performance.

“We played Watford not long ago, their near the top of the league at the minute, and we had 27 shots or something stupid like that, so we knew that the chances we create it’s a matter of time before we start scoring more goals and thankfully we did that on Saturday.”

On a personal note it was a sweet victory for Cairney, who was born in the Nottingham and, like goal scorer Alex Baptiste, is still a big Forest fan.

His dad, Ian, was a season ticket holder at the City Ground and his family still live locally.

“All my friends and family still live round here,” said Cairney. “It was a nice feeling. It’s proud for my dad to even play here because he came all his life watching Forest and for me to walk out is great for him and to win here is even better.

“My family were supporting Blackburn, no doubt about it. I saw them when we scored, trust me they were supporting us. I had my mum, dad cousins, sister, friends, everyone. I had to pull a lot of strings to get the tickets; I had about 16 I think.”