Tranmere Rovers assistant manager Ian Dawes spoke to the media following Saturday’s 1-1 draw at home to Mansfield.
Tranmere took the lead through Kaiyne Woolery at the end of the first half, but were pegged back by a late Stephen Quinn volley as the two teams shared the points.
Reflecting on the game, Dawes was pleased with the way TRFC played and how the players have worked hard to move the Club into the automatic promotion places with nine games remaining.
He said: “The difference between winning the game and drawing the game was the second goal. In football, when you have a chance to score the second goal and kill the game, if you don’t, it gives the opposition hope to go and score something out of nothing.
“I think Mansfield did do that, we dealt with the cross well, but their lad has followed up with the volley and it is a fantastic goal from their point of view and not much we could do to stop it.
“However, that wasn’t the problem, the problem wasn’t that we scored the second goal to see the match out.
“Kaiyne did very well coming back in and I thought the entire team, they played really well and worked hard! We did enough to win that game today other than take our opportunities. We have to learn from this.
“We have to take a breather now after this match, as disappointed as we are, if somebody said to us after our first ten matches, considering the start we had, that we would be third heading into the final nine matches, we would have taken that.
“The lads have worked incredibly hard to get to where they have got to, and I know we are all disappointed to not win today’s game but taking everything into account, we are in a great position going into the final nine matches.”
To listen to Ian’s interview in full, please CLICK HERE.