In dreadful conditions it was a bright start to the game from both sides.
Nasser El Khayati drew an excellent save from Chris Day at his near post winning Burton their first corner and they were almost undone on the counter as Bruno Andrade led a swift breakout which had Stevenage two on two against the Brewers defence.With rain falling heavily since 5pm, the game was in doubt before kick-off and some wondered if it would have been postponed minus the Sky Sports cameras. However the Brewers captain John Mousinho insists that the conditions weren’t that bad.
“It actually wasn’t too bad.
“I know the conditions looked terrible but there was only one side of the pitch that played badly.
“For the most of it, I think the ball zipped around nicely and I think we shown that when we didn’t let the conditions get the better of us, we got the ball around and played some nice stuff.”
The near touchline and the surrounding areas began to fill up with water as the ground staff tried their best to keep the game on, which they did. It was a bit of a contrast compared to the last home match where sprinklers were called upon.
“It wasn’t ideal but you like a bit of wetness on the surface so you can pass the ball about and it is nice and slick so yes it was a fun game to play in but it was just unfortunate that we couldn’t nick the three points.”
It was perhaps no surprise then when Stevenage stunned Albion by taking the lead on 12 minutes. A corner from the Stevenage left was headed back into the danger area by Simon Walton and in amongst a ruck of bodies the ball was deflected past McLaughlin with the final touch adjudged to have come off Tom NAYLOR under pressure from Kevin Lisbie.
“Unfortunately it cost us conceding the goal.
“You know we would like to keep a clean sheet like we have done under this manager a lot.
“We work hard on set pieces so especially with them.
“As you can probably see we score a lot from set-pieces and we did again today.”