Tony Mowbray felt referee Jeremy Simpson was keen to ‘level things up’ as he sent off Bradley Dack in Rovers’ draw at Swansea City.

Dack was shown his marching orders, for a second yellow card, 10 minutes after the hosts had been reduced to 10 men when Tom Carroll was sent off.

Rovers’ man advantage didn’t last for long however, with Dack sent off and now suspended for the trip to Bristol City on Saturday.

The game at the Liberty Stadium ended all square, with Andre Ayew cancelling out Danny Graham’s opening goal, with both coming inside the opening 11 minutes.

“I’d like to say we played against a very good team, a possession-based team,” Mowbray said.

“They keep the ball. I thought we dealt with it really well and talked about having good concentration out of possession.

“It was really frustrating to lose a goal from a set play, we’ve been pretty good with those this season, yet we got a mis-calculation with Ayew who is pretty good in the air. I think Dack was picking him up and that’s a bit of a miss-match.

“Would we have taken a point coming away to Swansea before the game? Maybe.

“But at 11v10 I thought there was only going to be one winner and it felt like the referee levelled the game up a little bit. Dack's second yellow card, it's unbelievable to think that's a yellow card. He basically just sticks his backside in to bounce the player as he does every week, but we'll take the point, put in the bag and move on.

“I know Swansea have had some struggles at home but they’re a good side.

“We’ll take the point and move on.

“We could have sneaked it late on, a few things breaking around the box that we didn’t make the right contact having broken away in behind them.

“Yet they had a lot of good possession around our box but I thought the concentration of our defence was good.”

Dack was booked in the ninth minute and received his second midway through the second half when Matt Grimes went down under his challenge.

Mowbray said he hadn’t thought about substituting his 10-goal top scorer, but once it went 10v10, felt Rovers did well to see the game out.

“Not really, it wasn’t a concern. Generally you trust your players and when you are on a yellow card you don’t do stupid things, you don’t pull people, commit professional fouls if someone is running away from you. I felt pretty comfortable.

“I stood there thinking ‘we’re going to win this football match’ but you never know.

“When it went 10 a-side it took me back to Sheffield United when we were so dominant but it when it went 10v10 they scored three goals very quickly. My mind went back to that.

“Because of the swing of the mood of the crowd, from being pretty sombre, thinking ‘are we going to hang on?’ to ‘we can win this’. It lifted the crowd and we had to deal with that.

“We’re a bit frustrated because at 11v10 we would have probably won the football match.

“But they’re a good football team, good ball retention, but we pressed them and for however long it was when we had an extra man we played around their box and I think the pressure would have mounted and we’d have probably scored with our quality on the pitch.”