MIDFIELD general Anton Robinson says the pressure of the play-offs is nothing compared with playing for Cherries’ very existence.

Robinson was part of the squad that secured the club’s Football League status in spite of a mountainous 17-point deduction in 2009.

The 25-year-old scored his first goal for the club in a must-win clash at Chester City on April 18 that year – a strike that went more than a long way to helping Eddie Howe’s side beat the odds and avoid dropping into the Conference.

And Robinson, who should line up in central midfield for Saturday’s play-off semi-final visit of Huddersfield, believes a different outcome could have sounded the death knell for the Dean Court club.

Robinson told the Echo: “We are the underdogs but we have achieved something already simply by reaching the play-offs whereas teams like Huddersfield and Peterborough were backed for automatic promotion. The pressure is certainly on them rather than us and that could go in our favour.

“There is always going to be pressure on these big games but we have played in more pressurised games than these – a couple of years ago we were playing in games where, if we had lost, AFC Bournemouth could have been extinct.

“The future of the club depended on those games at the end of that season, like the one away at Chester, and this play-off semi-final will be nowhere near as high-pressured as that.

“I’ll never forget that period when we escaped relegation. I’m proud to have been part of that and it will always stay with me.”