No easy ride for Bentley

Jim Bentley bemoaned Morecambe's wastefulness before Padraig Amond's late header rescued a 1-1 draw at Stevenage.

Veteran Chris Day produced an excellent display in goal for Boro to frustrate the visitors, who looked to have been hit by the sucker punch when Simon Walton converted a penalty. In the end a draw was a fair result between two side battling in mid-table in League Two and Bentley said: "We've come to a difficult place - Graham Westley's sides are always full of enthusiasm and energy. "I think on our first half performance we could have been out of sight because we had some decent chances where maybe we need to use our head a little bit more. "We just couldn't take one of those chances and I thought we looked solid at the back. "In the second half they changed their shape a little bit and had a go, the crowd got behind them and we've then conceded a penalty where, credit were credit's due, the referee has got it right. "But we kept plugging away and we had to make a couple of changes ourselves - we had players out there who've been injured for a long time, Jamie Devitt being one of them. "In the end a great delivery by Jamie from a corner and a fabulous header has got us a point." Day denied both Jack Redshaw and Amond in the first half before Stevenage went ahead when Walton scored from the spot after Mark Hughes chopped down David McAllister in the area. Day then made another good block from Amond but the same man was to come to Morecambe's rescue with five minutes left by heading in Devitt's corner. Stevenage boss Westley said: "I thought it was a fair result - they came with a strong game plan. "I think their mentality when they scored their goal said it all: that they were happy with that point and they wanted to see the game out. "They came to be determined, rugged, disciplined and organised and they did a good job in fairness. "We probably didn't speed our game up as much as I would have liked in the first half and later on we saw that we've got five or six lads who are coming back after injury and lacking match fitness. "Towards the end one or two of them were flagging and the early substitution of Jon Ashton obviously didn't help in terms of plan changes. "We're used to seeing our teams come strong late on and when you've got five or six coming back from long-term injury, sometimes your legs flag."