Barker proud of Crawley's fighting spirit (From The Argus)

Barker proud of Crawley's fighting spirit

11:04pm Tuesday 26th February 2013 in Sport By Steve Hollis

Boss Richie Barker praised Crawley's fighting spirit as they nearly grabbed an unlikely point against Brentford despite playing virtually the whole game with ten men.

Reds had Mark Connolly sent off after just 34 seconds and trailed 2-0 at half-time through goals from Clayton Donaldson and Sam Saunders.

But Crawley fought back after Adam Forshaw was also given his marching orders and halved the deficit through a Nicky Adams stunner with 25 minutes to go.

Reds were unable to get a second goal to slip further off the pace in the race to get in the League One play-offs but Barker felt they deserved a point for their effort.

He said: "You can't fault any of the players. Their attitude and desire was fantastic.

"At half-time I told them to stay in the game and who knows what might happen? How many times have we seen things evened up (by a referee).

"We gave it a really good go in the second half and all that was probably missing was a little bit of luck like a deflected shot."

Barker had few complaints about Connolly's dismissal but felt Forshaw was slightly unfortunate.

He added: "I didn't see it so I'll have to watch it again on the DVD but from what people have said it was a sending off.

"It is the earliest sending off I've known as a player or manager and immediately all your preparations go out of the window.

"To be fair to their player he said to their bench that he slipped over when he was sent off. It wasn't a foul but it wasn't a dive either."