Romanski cashes in as Morris sees red

PHIL BROWN wants his Swindon team to up their game despite fighting back from two goals behind against Tranmere to win at the County Ground.

The visitors got off to a dream start, scoring twice in the first 12 minutes before Jay Morris got himself sent off, turning the match on its head.

Swindon capitalised on having the extra man and bagged three goals, with defender Joe Romanski netting the winner.

But Brown lamented the Robins’ slow start. “The first-half performance was not just totally unacceptable, it was poor.

“It looked like as soon as they laid a glove on us we went down. It took a rash challenge from one of their players for us to step up to the plate.

“I took a massive risk with Marc Richards, I got 65 minutes out of him which was a massive bonus.”

Tranmere took the lead through Jonny Smith in the eighth minute when he struck his effort in at the back post. They were then in dreamland after James Norwood doubled their lead by neatly placing his shot past the oncoming Swindon keeper Lawrence Vigouroux. Despite their lightning start, it started to go horribly wrong for Tranmere as Jay Morris crashed into Swindon’s Martin Smith in the middle of the park to earn a straight red card.

The Robins hit back in the 19th minute to get their comeback started via an Elijah Adebayo tap-in at the back post.

They got their second of the match through striker Marc Richards, who neatly finished off a Steven Alzate cross. And Alzate was involved again to set up the winner, this time his centre was met by Romanski who beat goalkeeper Scott Davies.

Micky Mellon insisted that the red card was the moment his Tranmere team lost the game, but he called on his players to defend better.

Mellon said: “We were creative at 2-0 and up to that point, then, however, a big moment in the game changes pretty much everything.

“Let’s get it straight, because after that red card we defended poorly for their goals.

“Undoubtedly, the huge turning point in the game was the sending off. When you go in reckless like that, you run the risk of leaving us with 10 players.”