In his own words: Phil Parkinson post-Reading

Jack Hobbs' first goal for the club earned Wanderers a deserved share of the spoils against Reading in the Sky Bet Championship on Tuesday evening after Nelson Oliveira's penalty had given the Royals the lead.

And speaking to bwfc.co.uk after the final whistle, Wanderers boss Phil Parkinson covered the following points...

On deserving at least a point from the game...

I think we deserved something from the game - first half, it was even stevens. We knew they'd have possession and they also put the ball at risk in their back third.

We got into some good positions but our final ball let us down. In the second half, we did exactly the same what we set out to first, but with more conviction and we had some good attempts.

Luca had a great shot, we had one or two good chances and they offered very little really.

It was only a contentious penalty that got them ahead, but the lads were great to get back in the game and it was an important point for us.

On the penalty given against Pawel Olkowski...

It looks harsh from what I’ve seen - I haven’t looked at it closely, but it looks very harsh.

On the team's performance as a whole...

I was very pleased. It was a hard game and a difficult atmosphere at times, but I thought the lads stuck to their job and it was the pure honesty of the team that got us back into the game.

On Luca Connell's individual performance...

I’ve got to clear this up with all the people in the ground tonight - we gave young Luca, who is only 17, his debut on Friday.

We as a staff and medical team thought long and hard about whether to play him tonight as he still looked a little bit leggy from Friday, but we played him with the thought in our mind that he was always going to come off around 60 minutes.

It was clear to everyone on the bench that he needed to come off and I was shocked at the reaction because I thought the supporters would understand that one thing we do not want to do is get one of our young players injured.

The demands of playing first team football from youth team football is absolutely huge on a young player’s body, and I’m protecting our young players with my decisions.

It was a tough call to start him, but he deserved it and he was outstanding, but I was shocked at the reaction as we weren’t only bringing him off, but we were putting another young player on in Joe Pritchard.

From that point, it was a difficult atmosphere to play in and that’s why I’m so proud of the way the lads kept their concentration even with the penalty and got themselves back in the game.

And finally, on taking the positives into the weekend's game with Sheffield United...

We’ve got to look to do that. It was an important point for us, especially going a goal down.

It was important that we didn’t lose tonight. That Reading team is an expensively assembled squad - they have spent millions putting that team together the past few years since the Play-off Final two years ago.

There’s reasons they’re in the bottom three, but we more than matched them tonight.

If we hadn’t got a point, it would have been a travesty.

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