Defence staves off late assault

Lee Barnard celebrates his vital goal at Swindon. Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire.

ATHLETIC successfully repelled a late onslaught from Swindon as they held on for a valuable point at the County Ground.

Lee Barnard’s smart finish after excellent approach work from Lee Croft in the second half had stimulated hopes that the visitors could nick an unexpected victory against a Town side riding high at the top of npower League One.

But three minutes later, Adam Rooney did a serviceable impression of namesake Wayne to spectacularly level the game up with a wonderful overhead scissors kick.

From that point until the final whistle, it was one-way traffic. Rooney and fellow substitute James Collins both missed golden chances to hand Swindon the lead, just as Gary Roberts had done in the first half – albeit under pressure thanks to a superb piece of last-ditch defending by Jean-Yves Mvoto.

"It's a good point on the face of it, but I'm disappointed in one sense because we need the wins,” said Athletic boss Lee Johnson.

"There were some great individual performances. It was really positive.

“You can see we've come on and it's just getting to that level where we can sustain that pressure for longer periods of the game.”