Mellon proud despite late blow

Mellon heaped praise on his Shrewsbury players despite seeing them surrender all three points in a 1-1 draw with Northampton.

Substitute Emile Sinclair grabbed a late point for Northampton Town in the 1-1 draw with the Shrews, who had Liam Lawrence dismissed midway through the first half. James Collins gave Shrewsbury a second-half advantage which they looked like holding on to until Sinclair popped up to head home the leveller. Mellon said: "It's not a case of mixed emotions for me, I'm very proud of my players and the way they have performed because they had so much to contend with in this game. To give the performance that we did gives me nothing but pride. "We have no complaints about the sending-off, from where I was it looked like it was a two-footed tackle and it didn't look too good at all. So that one was the correct decision and I don't want to talk too much about the referee because I'll get caught out. "All I can say is wow. Wow. I haven't seen anything as bad as that before, either as a manager or as a player. "But my day won't be affected by anything else that has happened because my main emotion is pride. We kept two players up front even when we had 10 men and we really went for it." Meanwhile, Cobblers boss Chris Wilder was happy enough to take a point following a less than impressive performance. Wilder said: "I thought we were the better side for the first half-hour of the game but the sending-off made them change the way they played. We found it difficult after that and we didn't get the ball wide enough. "We played better against 11 players but in the second half we slowed the game down too much and that made it easier for their 10 players. We gave away a cheap goal and that gave Shrewsbury a big lift. "I will take a goal at any time in the game and I'm very pleased for Emile Sinclair. Shrewsbury are a very good side and they made it difficult for us to break them down. "But the players kept going, despite not playing that well, and we've got a point out of it."