"Their goalkeeper situation disrupted our flow” – Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill after Wealdstone draw

Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill believes that his side were disrupted after an injury to Archie Matthews in a 2-2 draw against Wealdstone.

The Wealdstone goalkeeper’s injury led to a chunk of added time being added on in the first half, which meant the early dominance from Rovers was put to rest.

Rovers missed the chance to make it five league wins in a row for the first time since 2016/17 after leading 2-0 early following goals from Christian Doidge and Adam May, which was cancelled out by a Callum McFarlane double.

“I think the goalkeeper situation disrupted our flow,” Cotterill said on the stoppage in the first-half. “We didn’t quite look the same after the restart. We talked about big balls being put in our box today. We spoke about the second balls and fighting for them.

“At 2-1 the keeper pulls off a great save from Emmanuel Osadebe, Liam Sercombe hits the post and it goes on the inside, if those go in it is game over. When you are closing in on the 90th minute, you have got to make sure that you win the first contact in the box or you make sure that you are on that second ball.”

Rovers opened the scoring after just two minutes when a cross found Doidge’s head to knock it past Matthews in the Wealdstone goal.

May doubled Rovers’ tally just a few minutes later when his long-range effort found the top corner with Cotterill’s side looking to be in dreamland.

Matthews, the Wealdstone goalkeeper was forced off with a bad injury leading to nine minutes of stoppage time at the end of the first-half, which ultimately gave the visitors an opportunity to reset in the game.

A goal was found for Wealdstone in the 42nd minute with McFarlane grabbing his first of the afternoon after a well worked free-kick routine.

The visitors were level with a minute of normal time to play when McFarlane tapped an easy second goal home.

Ryan Inniss was missing from the squad against Wealdstone due to a retrospective ban following the Solihull Moors game and will now miss the next two matches.

“There was an incident in the game where retrospective action was taken against Ryan,” Cotterill said on his centre-half’s suspension.

“Ryan was being grappled from a throw-in and I think what he has done is as he is running away where he has tried to shake him off and I think he has caught him with his head. It is not a headbutt or anything like that, but he has caught him with his head and the lad has gone down.

"You can’t get away with anything, I am not saying that he should have got away with what happened, but we didn’t know about that. The referee never did anything about it at the time.”

Cotterill was keen to a get a second goal early in the game, after only finding the second goal on Tuesday in the 89th minute, but Wealdstone did well to fight back in the game.

The start of the game was excellent for Rovers and they could have been out of sight even just 20 minutes into the game. On that positive opening encounter, Cotterill said: “It was the perfect start for us. As I have said we have got to adjust and understand the stoppage in the game, that is because their goalkeeper was down and we hope he is alright, but that definitely disrupted our flow.”

Despite losing that two-goal lead, Rovers have still picked up seven points from their three-game week this week. On that bit of an unbeaten run, Cotterill said: “At the end of the day, if someone would have given us seven points at the beginning of the week, we probably would have taken them.

“The points in a season, they don’t always come from where you would expect them. There would have been an expectancy of us winning the game, the expectancy would have risen when we were 2-0 up, that is human nature. We have to move on from it now, seven points out of nine has been a really good week, it could’ve been nine, but somewhere along the line we will win a game that we don’t deserve to win and maybe we’ll get those points back.”

The draw takes Cotterill’s side into second after nine games played. Rovers’ next game is a trip to Gateshead in a top-of-the-table clash which is the longest journey of the season (3pm kick-off).

Forest Green Rovers: Ward; Long, Moore-Taylor, Tozer, Robson; McCann (Bunker 62), Sercombe (Quigley 78), May; McAllister, Doidge (Cardwell 62), Knowles (Osadebe 62).

Wealdstone: Matthews (Adams 22); Cook, Mariappa, Barrett; Cesay, Wells-Morrison, Dyer (Hutchinson 75), Mason (Thorpe 65); Boldewijn (Sandat 90), Kretzschmar (Obiero 46), McFarlane.

Referee: Paul Marsden.

Attendance: 2,265 (193 away).

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