LIAM LEAVES IT LATE AND CRAIG CALLS OUT DEFENCE
Hignett fumes at dramatic defeat
HARTLEPOOL boss Craig Hignett made his anger clear as his side conceded a 90thminute goal to come away from high-flying Doncaster with nothing, leaving them just two points above the League Two drop zone.
Only Morecambe have a worse defensive record than Pools in League Two, and a run of four defeats and one win in their last five league games – despite scoring eight – makes it crystal clear where the problems lie.
Hignett was particularly frustrated at the nature of the two Doncaster goals, with the first coming just moments after United hit the post at the other end and the second a tap-in for Liam Mandeville when the game seemed set for a stalemate.
He said: “If you don’t do your jobs for 93 minutes, you run the risk of doing that.
“We’ve been done by two really poor bits of defending, not doing your jobs properly. There was only two in the game and that’s what’s happened.
“It’s galling and hard to take but the lads have got to start learning.
“You can’t float along in games and just expect everything to be fine. You’ve got to do your job, and if you’re a defender first and foremost your job is to defend.
“The lads are all disappointed in there and quite rightly, they should
be. They should have seen the game out with three minutes left and we’d have got away with a really good point.”
Doncaster were on top throughout the game but especially in the first half, with John Marquis seemingly giving them a lead after 14 minutes, only for the referee to signal that James Coppinger had handled the ball in the build-up.
Ross Etheridge was forced to come off the bench and into the Doncaster goal after Marko Marosi got a kick in the eye that left him unable to see, and very nearly conceded just three seconds later as Padraig Amond curled a shot onto the far post from out wide. Etheridge gathered the rebound and booted the ball downfield, where Coppinger again teed up Marquis to find the net from six yards, this time without intervention from the officials. Mathieu Baudry gave Hartlepool a way back into the game with a silly challenge on Amond just inside the box which the striker converted – after a short delay while Etheridge received treat- ment on a broken finger that the substitute had no choice but to play through.
Hartlepool’s defence held firm throughout most of the second half and limited Doncaster to halfchances, but to Hignett’s disgust they allowed Marquis to slip through in the last minute and square for Mandeville to tap in.
That winner moves Rovers closer to the top of the table thanks to league leaders Plymouth’s 3-0 defeat to Grimsby, but manager Darren Ferguson believes Donny’s run of 13 home games unbeaten is the more pertinent fact.
He said: “We can’t control what Plymouth and all the rest are doing except when we play them.
“We can only concentrate on ourselves and I go back to the same thing I’ve said all season: we’ll be fine if we can keep the consistency.
“We’re still unbeaten at home, which is really, really important because we’ve got all the big ones to come yet.
“If we win next week we’re back on 36 points from 18 games and I’d be absolutely delighted with that.
“We’ve got enough players in this team to get us goals and we have that quality in the top end of the pitch.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we were going to get that winner late on, but we managed to.
“You have to keep believing and the players did that.”