IF Rovers are serious about not giving up on the play-offs then this was a funny way of showing it.

Actually, scratch that, as there was nothing amusing whatsoever about the way they played in the first half here.

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You can understand why Rovers were feeling leggy after a marathon run of 13 matches in seven stamina-sapping weeks.

And you can understand why they were feeling low after the devastating nature of their midweek loss to Brentford.

But there is absolutely no excusing the performance they produced in what was a truly grim opening period.

All the talk coming out of the camp before the game was about how Rovers would not give up on promotion until it was mathematically impossible.

But talk is cheap and for half of this match they resembled a side that were already on the beach.

And that is neither good enough nor acceptable.

In 45 minutes of football no-one who had the displeasure of watching will ever get back, Rovers were startlingly bad.

Devoid of urgency, intensity and creativity, they barely strung three or four passes together and the only positive was that they were not further behind at the interval.

But while they did get better after the restart – and let’s face, they couldn’t get much worse – by then the damage had already been done.

Gary Bowyer and his players had credit in the bank after three straight league wins and a magnificent FA Cup draw at Liverpool.

But, much more so than the late defeat to Brentford, this went a long way to eroding it.

That much was clear by the entirely understandable boos that greeted the full-time and, in particular, half-time whistles.

Rovers did not deserve to be jeered off after going down to Brentford.

But their attitude here, until a much-needed half-time rocket from Bowyer, was poor.

There was only one team playing with desire before the break and they were not the ones in the blue and white halves.

Brighton, in their shocking orange away kit, must have scarcely believed their luck as they were made to look like a side challenging at the top end of the table rather than one battling it out near the bottom.

But even then the only way they could break down Rovers was when Matt Kilgallon, spectacularly and fittingly, headed Chris O’Grady’s cross into his net.

That said Brighton could have scored either side of stand-in skipper Kilgallon’s moment of misfortune with O’Grady firing against the post and Jason Steele saving from Joao Teixeira.

Rovers had a perfectly good goal ruled out when David Stockdale fumbled a Ben Marshall cross into his own goal under pressure from Jordan Rhodes.

But the Seagulls goalkeeper, bar from a flying stop from Marshall, was woefully underworked until the belated arrival of Rudy Gestede.

It is hard to see how a striker of his quality can be left on the bench for what was another must-win match.

But the ironic cheers Chris Brown received when making way for Gestede were undeserved.

Brown, for all his selfless workrate, just does not look like scoring at the moment.

But he did play an important role in the victories at Charlton Athletic and Sheffield Wednesday and he was not alone in falling below the required standard here.

Rovers did, at least and at last, raise the bar in the final 35 minutes after Gestede and Tommy Spurr entered the fray.

Stockdale saved superbly from Rhodes, pushing the striker’s header on to the post, and from man-of-the-match Markus Olsson, whose stinging first-drive was heading for the top corner.

Kilgallon, Rhodes and Gestede also sent efforts straight down Stockdale’s throat while Marshall got a back-healed attempt all wrong after neat build-up play down the right.

That, however, was a moment of rare quality from Rovers who, for all their improvement in the second half, still never played well.

And, that’s the thing, how many times have they genuinely done that in the league this season?

Certainly not enough to warrant a place in the top six. But had Rovers won here, there would still have been a glimmer of hope.

Instead, going into what will be a long two weeks, that hope has been all but extinguished.

And, really, they can have no-one but themselves to blame.