Unlikely moment was Tisdale's highlight of the season

"One of them would be staying in the dressing room for an hour after losing away at Grimsby," he said.

Dons twice lost at Blundell Park last season, first in the FA Cup in November, and then again in late January in the thick of their torrid start to 2019. Two weeks later, having dropped out of the play-off spots, Dons mounted a five-game winning streak to get their automatic promotion aspirations back on track.

It might not have been a day to remember on the pitch, but Tisdale said one of his favourite moments came after the game in January - a dismal 1-0 defeat - with all the players having a frank discussion in the dressing room afterwards.

"Highlights aren't always something that worked, it can be the tough times as well," he explained. "We shared a laugh, and a joke. We had a good chat about it, we were desperately disappointed with how we played and it felt like a lot of things were going wrong. But that was a real turning point. There was something about that dressing room afterwards that I liked.

"Of course winning 6-0 against Cambridge, that was great, we'd improved everything from the week before, that was good for the manager to see. But a serious chat at Grimsby, turned into a chuckle, and we thought 'this is our moment, we've got to decide what we're going to do.'"