BENNI McCarthy has earned praise from manager Mark Hughes for the extra training ground work he's put in to push him up the goalscoring charts.

McCarthy remained at Brockhall for a few extra days after the 2-1 win over Birmingham, before meeting up with South Africa for their friendly with Italy further into the fortnight break for internationals.

And Hughes believes he will reap the rewards for the extra drills he has done.

"I thought Benni did well (against Birmingham). I thought he looked a lot sharper and more like the Benni of last year," the Rovers boss said.

"We kept him back after that game and didn't allow him to go with South Africa for the initial part of the week because we felt it was important he did some more work.

"So he went later, played 87 minutes or so on Wednesday night. He'll be better for that, and he's very much in my thoughts for this weekend."

He added: "He's been doing conditioning work, position-specific work and trying to replicate what he needs to do in games and just repetition of the types of runs he has to do and trying to make sure he's dynamic in his play.

"When Benni's like that he's very difficult to stop.

"He's done different types of runs, coming shorter, going long and just repetition, making sure that there's an end product at the end. Benni likes to score goals so we always make sure there's an opportunity to shoot at a goal at the end of all the work he's done.

"We're not telling him how to suck eggs. What we're doing is just trying to replicate what he needs to do in games and what he does do in games when he's flying.

"He's taken it on board and been really professional in his approach to the extra work he has done because I think he understood that he needed to do a little bit more.

"He's taken that on board and has been very good in his approach."