Excellent Eoin gives Ferguson headache
DONCASTER manager Darren Ferguson was left tearing his hair out as his side were again denied at the death.
Andy Butler’s second-half header was set to give Rovers three points and a third straight home win.
Up popped Eoin Doyle late on though, firing in his 14th goal of the season to add to Ferguson’s woes following on from the injury-time defeat at Oxford in midweek.
“It’s a really disappointing result,” said Ferguson. “Again we’ve thrown away two points right at the death.
“We’re just not getting the rub of the green, I don’t care what anyone says watching our performances.
“What can you do when your centrehalf is going to head it away, he slips and Doyle scores?
“There’s not a great deal I can do to prevent that incident but certainly in the last 15 minutes we didn’t keep the ball well enough.
“Oldham threw about four or five players up front. We just needed to keep the ball and that disappointed me.”
In a scrappy clash that only burst into life in the latter stages, Butler denied Gevaro Nepomuceno with a superb goalline clearance of a low effort following a weaving run by Tope Obadeyi.
Alfie May then got in behind the Oldham defence but was denied by a superb Johny Placide finger-tip save.
Butler crashed in a header off the underside of the crossbar from a Tommy Rowe free-kick amid a good spell from the battling hosts. The ball appeared to cross the line before Anthony Gerrard turned it home when attempting to clear.
Oldham’s substitutes had an impact late in the game and one of them, Aaron Amadi-Holloway, rose to flick on a left-flank cross invitingly into the path of Doyle eight yards out.
“We definitely deserved something from the game,” said Oldham boss Richie Wellens. “The final half-hour was like something from the Alamo at times and the only disappointment was we didn’t get enough on target.
“When you go 1-0 down in this division, especially away from home, it’s obviously a positive to take a point.
“It was a good performance in the second half and it shows that we go to the very end and ask teams questions.
“Set-pieces were the only way they were going to score. They were not going to carve us open.
“Unfortunately for us, we left one of their main headers free in the six-yard box.”