Fleetwood boss Scott Brown admitted his side’s 1-1 League One draw at Ipswich felt more like a victory for them than just a share of the spoils.
His side snatched a dramatic late equaliser – six minutes into second-half stoppage-time – when Cain Hayes’ shot took a wicked deflection, struck the post and ended up in the back of the net to record an 11th draw of the season for the visitors.
Brown said: “I thought the performance was outstanding after the first five minutes.
“It shows the determination of these lads to come back.
“A lot of teams could go one nil down here and then the momentum and their fans and with the players they’ve got could see them go on to score three or four.
“But we’ve managed to go in at half-time and it’s still 1-0. We knew we would get a chance so we had to make sure we stayed in the game.
“It’s a tribute to the lads’ fitness level that they continue to drive forward with belief and they threw everything at it.
“The game plan worked today but we need to make sure we can turn the draws into three points.
“We’ve had a lot of draws this season but this this feels like a win against a fantastic team at a fantastic stadium.”
Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna said Fleetwood’s goal was “lucky” but his team had a host of chances to kill off the game after Luke Woolfenden’s strike in the second minute but they failed to take their chances.
Christian Walton came to the rescue for Ipswich when he bravely went down at the feet of Ged Garner. Jay Lynch parried away a goal-bound effort from Conor Chaplin, while chances fell to Cameron Humphreys and Kayden Jackson.
Hayes’ shot in added on time was deflected by Cameron Burgess to end up in the net and in the final moments Jackson was bundled off the ball in the penalty area and Josh Earl was given a red card.
McKenna said: “I thought second half we worked ever so hard and there was a great resilience about us to see the game out and we gave away so little chances.
“They had the header from the set play but other than that I thought that we were really resilient and solid and they didn’t look like scoring.
“It’s a long-range, deflected goal, it’s a lucky goal, there’s no two ways about it.
“It wasn’t coming with the flow of the game…we’ve had quite a few things go against us very late in games.
“I thought that the goal was unfortunate and undeserved for the effort the players put in.
“If the game had finished on 93 minutes I would have been saying I really enjoyed it because it was a feisty game, they came to play, they came to compete. I thought we had done enough to earn a gritty win.”
