Richie Wellens breathed a sigh of relief after his Leyton Orient side reached round two of the FA Cup by winning on penalties at Boreham Wood.
Orient had eased into a two-goal lead after 49 minutes, Sonny Perkins and Dan Agyei the men on target, but the visitors hit back with goals by Tyrone Marsh and Charlie O’Connell making it 2-2 and taking the tie to extra time.
“I’m relieved because the ultimate aim is to be in the draw for the second round,” said Wellens, who saw his side reduced to 10 men in extra time when Jayden Sweeney was sent off for a second bookable offence.
“It’s something that we need financially and also for the exposure of the club, but we should never have been in the position of going into a penalty shoot-out.
“We were totally dominant and in total full control of the game but then we have a whacky five or six minutes and keep constantly turning the ball over.
“We kept giving the ball away and losing duels and allowed them to get into our penalty box too many times. So it turned out to be a lot more difficult than it should have been because we should have killed the game off.”
The Wood manager Luke Garrard said: “I said to our staff to start preparing certain players because after an hour I was already thinking about our next game on Wednesday because I felt we were out of the tie.
“But I delayed it slightly and in fairness the lads on the pitch went to another level but it’s a real shame we didn’t quite make it through.
“I saw a sea change in our performance and it’s a shame we’re not talking about a magnificent comeback because that can spark a season.
“We worked on a few things and focused on a few frailties we thought could help us in Leyton Orient and the way they play. I said to the players after 20 minutes, if you’d landed on Earth from Pluto you wouldn’t have known who was the League One side.”
