Darrell Clarke pleased with Walsall work rate
Manager Darrell Clarke praised the work rate of his players after Walsall and Mansfield played out a 1-1 draw.
On a freezing night in the West Midlands, the pitch at the Banks’s Stadium became harder and more dangerous to play on as the game went on.
That led to both managers agreeing to end the fixture bang on 90 minutes with no stoppage time to ensure neither side picked up a serious injury.
“It was never going to be a great game – they were awful playing conditions,” Clarke said.
“The pitch was very, very firm and it was getting very dangerous towards the end there.
“It was not a game for the purist. There was never really going to be much quality in the game.
"But at the end of the day it’s a point – a point against a team that had won their last five and were in really good form, they’ve got big name players, high expectations.
“There are 20 games to go, plenty of points to go for and we will keep chipping away and working on the players and working hard on the training ground.
“At the moment the captain (James Clarke) is not in the team, Rory Holden is also injured and we’ve sold two of our best players (Zak Jules and Elijah Adebayo).
“But the lads are giving me everything and that’s all you can ask for as a manager.”
On the decision to end the game on 90 minutes, Clarke said: “It was getting dangerous.
“I’ve got a small squad, a lot of injuries, we were both of the opinion it was getting dangerous and we didn’t want an injury.
“There wasn’t a lot in the game, no one was really pushing too hard so we didn’t want to take the risk.“It would have been very sad for any one of the two teams to lose a player through serious injury when the conditions were deteriorating from minute dot.”
