Mansfield Town

First team coach pleased to pick up a point at Fratton Park.

First team coach Micky Moore was pleased that our players showed resilience and strong character with their backs against the wall to come away from Fratton Park with a hard-earned point in today’s 1-1 draw with Portsmouth.

Simon Heslop’s first goal for the club just 58 seconds into the second half had us dreaming of maximum points, but Paul Robinson equalised for the hosts with 20 minutes remaining.

Pompey threw the proverbial kitchen sink at the Stags in search of a winner in the closing exchanges – launching wave after wave of attacks – but despite creating some good openings, they were unable to take the points.

On a different day, the three points could have even headed back to North Nottinghamshire as Rakish Bingham enjoyed some good chances during the match, whilst Fergus Bell also forced a couple of good saves from Paul Jones.

“To come here and get a point is excellent. It was a very important draw – especially after the last two performances and results, but parts of us are frustrated that we didn’t get all three points,” said Moore.

“Over the last couple of weeks, in the first half we’ve let ourselves down.

“So what we set out to do today was to get to half-time either 1-0 in front or at 0-0 and still in the game and then re-structure our game-plan in the second half, and that’s what we did.

“We come out for the second half and we got on the front foot, got right at them and got ourselves 1-0 in front.

“Rakish Bingham has had a good opportunity [to score] and on another day should have scored really, but the good thing for Rakish is that he’s getting in there now, because over the last few weeks he’s been starved of opportunities.

“He’ll feel with one or two opportunities that he’s had today, he should have scored, and we thought, especially in that first 15 to 20 minutes [of the second half] we should have been 2-0 up.”

He continued: “But credit to Portsmouth. They’re a good side, [Fratton Park] is a difficult place to come and in the last 20 minutes they put a lot of bodies forward and got the ball forward.

“We’re disappointed in the manner that which their goal came about, because it was from the second phase after a set-piece, which was something that we spoke about.

“In the 90th minute, with our [away] record at the moment – and if you go back 12 months ago where we conceded two goals to Accrington Stanley and Plymouth Argyle – goals late on, we just said ‘We’ll take the point and move on.’”