Recalled Woodrow felt he deserved some good luck after scoring penalty rebound during Millers victory

​Luton striker Cauley Woodrow felt he deserved the fortune that came his way after scoring his third goal of the season during Saturday's 2-0 victory at Rotherham United.

With just over a minute gone after the break, the Hatters, who had taken the lead through Carlton Morris’s strike on the stroke of half time, were awarded only their second league penalty of the season.

Striker Elijah Adebayo is Luton’s usual man from 12 yards, but with the forward out due to an ankle injury and Woodrow in for only a fourth Championship start of the campaign, it was left to the former Fulham and Barnsley attacker to step up.

He hit his effort well enough, only to see Millers keeper Josh Vickers pull off a fine diving stop to his right.

Thankfully for Woodrow, the ball rebounded into the six yard box, with the striker quickest to reach and prod over the line, as speaking afterwards, he admitted it was a scenario he had prepared, saying: “He saved it, a bit of luck that it came back to me, but when you’ve been out of the team for so long you’re due a little bit of luck.

"I’m grateful it fell back to me.

"The keeper did pull off a good save, so he’s probably a little bit annoyed, but when it landed back in the six yard box I was buzzing really as I knew at that point it was going to go in.

"Whenever I took penalties in the past, there was always a chance the keeper’s going to save it.

"So once you do have your shot you need to make sure you’re on the ball just in case it does fall because as you’re so close to the goal, the keeper's fully committed, when you strike it hard, a lot of the time it does come back into the space in front of the goal.

"I was lucky it did fall for me, but I was always ready for that if that was the case and thankfully it fell and I could put it in.

"You’ve got to always have that in your mind that it could land and you need to follow it up once you’ve taken your shot.

"To put us two-nil up as from there we knew we would be able to win the game.

"I was grateful it fell into the six yard box and didn’t go out for a corner or anything like that, so someone was watching over me I think.

"I’m really happy, the main thing, I know it’s a cliche, but winning, that was the main goal.

"It was nice for me, I’ve been out of the team for a long while.

"I’ve been coming on probably every game, but to get the start and to win 2-0, and to score, it was a great weekend for me.”

Woodrow was odds-on to score on the day though, as of the teams he had netted against during his career, the Millers were the highest with five.

It was an opposition he knew he had enjoyed previous success, continuing: "I knew I’d scored a few goals against them in the past, I actually scored my first ever goal in the Championship away at Rotherham.

"So I knew that stat for sure, but it definitely was in my head before the game.

"I didn't know it was the team I’d scored the most goals against in my career though.”

The forward was also aware just how important his sixth goal against United was to double Town’s advantage and give them some breathing space in South Yorkshire.

He said: “It was early on in the second half and at one-nil, as we’ve found out this season, one-nil can be a dangerous scoreline.

"So to get the two goals kind of killed the game off and we were in cruise control really from then.

"We knew we were in a comfortable position to win the game, so it was an important goal really.”

After a quiet start, the Hatters and Woodrow really began to gain control of proceedings, with the striker believing the visitors' preparation ahead of the fixture paid off to a tee, adding: “You look at most games in this league or any league really, they start off a bit frantic.

"You’re working out how the opposition are playing, they’re working out how you’re playing, first 20 minutes are usually a little bit all over the place.

"But we had a straight gameplan that we wanted to execute, we worked on it in training and after about 20 minutes or whatever it was, we had full control.

"We implemented what we had done in training in the game and I think that’s why we had such a good performance really.

"Everyone was in the right positions and it was a good all-round team performance.”