Manager Keith Hill spoke to Dale Player following Tuesday night's entertaining draw at MK Dons...
"I’m really pleased to have come here and got something out of the game – it was a free hit for us tonight," said Hill.
"When we’re 2-1 up and going into the last five minutes of the game you could be a tad disappointed [to have drawn the game], but I don’t feel any disappointment whatsoever because of the stretch that we’re on at the minute.
"We’re going through a phase of the season where we’re picking up injuries. Obviously we tried to appeal Matty Done’s red card and I didn’t find out until around 3 o’clock that it didn’t get rescinded. We did a light training session today and Matty Lund got injured, so I think any squad or team gets stretched when you’re missing Matty Lund, Peter Vincenti and Maty Done. We’ve also been missing Jack O’Connell and Ian Henderson, so it’s really, really difficult when you’re going through that testing time because it’s testing the squad of players and testing me as Manager.
"But we’re at stretching point, not at breaking point at this moment in time, because Andy Cannon has come in, Jack Muldoon has come in, Reuben’s getting fitter and I feel as though we’ll come out of what’s happening now stronger because there will be other younger players who get opportunities."
He continued: “I’m really pleased with the performance. We’ve played against MK Dons today and we’re still quite young when we’ve got the likes of Rhys Bennett, Jamie Allen, Andy Cannon, Bastien Hery, Scott Tanser, Jack O’Connell, Jack Muldoon – they do make mistakes and they made mistakes tonight but I have to forgive everyone and they have to forgive themselves - we have to brush ourselves down and go again. I don’t think anything can derail the progress that we’re making.
“We were asking ourselves how long MK Dons have been in League One and it’s six seasons. They're earning the right to be challenging for promotion. Many of us thought that MK Dons may have been promoted before now but this looks as though it could possibly be their season. They’ve got a tremendous squad and they play really good football, so I’m happy with a point.
“Do we want to get promoted? Do we want to be in the promotion shake up? Of course we do, if it was to happen,” laughed Hill. "But we can’t force it and we can’t say that we’re in a position to be in a promotion campaign. We’re just on a retaining League One status campaign.”
The full ten minute interview is available on Dale Player.