Conor Hourihane explains Barnsley FC thinking as substitutes make a difference against Doncaster Rovers
Conor Hourihane praised the togetherness of his Barnsley players after they battled through to claim victory at the end of a week where the squad was badly hit by illness.
Davis Keillor-Dunn was only fit enough to play half-an-hour and Nathaniel Ogbeta 45 minutes, and Hourihane held both back until the second half to great effect to claim a 2-1 win over Doncaster Rovers.
Ogbeta understandably did a better job of dealing with the threat of Luke Molyneux than out-of-position Jake Rooney could on his first league start for over two years, and Keillor-Dunn scored the winning goal, his 10th of the season.
"There's no doubt if Doncaster end up 2-0 after 10 minutes, people are going, why aren't you playing Davo?" admitted Hourihane. "But there's a bigger picture.
"You have to look after people. It's a long season there. And it's obviously all great that it's all come together.
"But when people kind of knew the bigger picture and the full picture, then it would kind of explain itself.
"There was illness in the camp," explained Hourihane. "There were four or five lads off for the majority of the week.
"Nate was similar as well. It wouldn't have been fair to ask lads to start from the off in terms of that. And sharing minutes with certain individuals was important.
"I just thought Nate then could kind of play the second 45 minutes and give us a real strong performance from that point of view."
But it was about more than just Keillor-Dunn's deadliness in front of goal for the Reds.
They made a good contribution to a first half where Vimal Yoganathan scored his first league goal only for Molyneux, who also hit a post, to equalise.
But Doncaster had the better of the second half, and the visitors had to dig for victory.
"I'm delighted," said their coach. "It's great to come out on the right side of a really tight game. I don't think we've had that too many times this season.
"I thought the lads put in a real, real positive performance with and without the ball. Young players getting guided by David McGoldrick and Mark Roberts and Luca Connell as captain.
"I thought we just looked really hungry and energetic.
"I'm really pleased, and proud of the lads as well.
"They showed some real character and togetherness to come through at the end of the last five, six minutes."
it was Barnsley's first win in six League One games, although Hourihane felt that statistic was misleading.
"I don't think we were on a bad run," he said.
"We beat (Manchester) United (Under-21s) and then we beat York in the cups. It's just been a little bit stop-start from the league point of view.
"We had a real positive result the way to Bradford in a real tough game. The one real disappointing result was probably Rotherham.
"We wanted to come here in front of a packed away end and put in a real good strong performance."
Doncaster felt they should have had a penalty when Tennai Watson challenged Billy Sharp in the 85th minute, but Hourihane was unhappy with his old team-mate in the first half.
"I played with Billy and I've nothing but admiration for him," he said. "But the incident in the first half, I think it's quite nasty, the one with Shep early on when he left a little bit on him.
"I think that was our talking point, over the penalty."