Doughty’s spot-kick woe for Silkmen
SWINDON manager Phil Brown hailed his players’ spirit after coming from behind to snatch a dramatic win over newly-promoted Macclesfield.
Summer signing Michael Doughty scored a hat-trick – including two stoppage time penalties – as the much-fancied Robins edged past last season’s National League champions.
Relieved Brown said: “I don’t think there’s been many games like that, never mind the opening day.
“One of the old managers once said to me, ‘if you can’t be good, be lucky’, and today I thought I was going to be an unlucky manager.
“I must admit, I thought the first-half performance was worthy of two, maybe three goals and the quality of our play was something to be admired.
“I think 70-75% of games don’t end in a win if you go behind, so it was good to have that never-say-die attitude.”
Macclesfield looked on course for a dream return to the Football League after Koby Arthur’s double had given them a 2-1 lead.
Arthur opened the scoring a minute after half-time when Swindon switched off following a quickly-taken free kick.
The home side hit back almost straight from the re-start when debutant Doughty headed in Kyle Knoyle’s pinpoint cross.
Macclesfield were gifted the lead for a second time just seven minutes later after a blunder from home goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux, who made a mess of clearing Olly Lancashire’s back-pass, allowing Arthur to lift the ball over his head and into the net.
Doughty drew Swindon level in the 96th minute after Elijah Adebayo had been fouled by Jared Hodgkiss.
The experienced midfielder completed his treble and capped Swindon’s amazing comeback three minutes later following Arthur’s trip on Adebayo. Macclesfield manager Mark Yates said: “Any defeat is hard to stomach but especially in circumstances like that.
“We showed great spirit and belief to get ourselves into a winning position against one of the favourites for promotion.
“Obviously we are gutted by what happened at the end but we can take a lot of positives from today.
“We have proved we deserve to be in this division and that we can compete with anyone.”