Tony Mowbray felt it took falling behind to kick his side into life as they earned a point on the road at Luton Town.

Sam Gallagher levelled after Luke Berry had put the hosts ahead with 21 minutes to play, and Rovers made a late push for victory, not helped by two refereeing decisions by Gavin Ward.

He penalised Ben Brereton for diving, shortly after not awarding a foul on Adam Armstrong when clean through, as Rovers made their feelings known towards the man in the middle.

While they ended the stronger, the game took a little while to get into life, and Mowbray said: “We’re disappointed we didn’t get three points.

“With respect to Luton, they stayed up last season by the skin of their teeth, I think they’ve grown from the game just a few months ago.

“Ultimately after they scored really we upped our intensity level to the levels it’s normally at and we got the goal and really should have scored again.

“We had some great opportunities, some strange refereeing decisions that didn’t help us but we’ll put the point in the bag and move on.”

Brereton appeared to be fouled in injury time as he made his way towards the penalty area, only to be adjudged to have dived by the referee who booked him.

That incensed Brereton, and his team-mates, who only 30 seconds earlier had seen Armstrong appear to be pushed to the floor when running through on goal.

“I don’t know, sometimes as a manager you can look for things but that’s why I was asking someone independent, ‘was it me?’ But it’s done now and we have to move on,” Mowbray said.

“I’m not sure about the accountability of the officials, who looks at those decisions and says ‘what are you doing?’ because I’m stood on the sidelines shouting ‘what are you doing?’

“I try not and be biased, if I didn’t think it was a free kick I wouldn’t, but there was a lot of things I was having to shout about that I thought was wrong.

“I was 70 yards away and I could hear the contact. I don’t want to talk about the referee, other than the fact he was really poor, whether it was in or out of the box I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t a dive.

“I thought he started the game really poorly the referee and finished it really poorly.”

Gallagher scored his second of the season, and just as he did in this fixture last season, came off the bench to find the back of the net.

That earned Rovers a point, with Mowbray pleased for the attacker getting his name on the scoresheet.

He added: “I’m pleased for Sam, a stop-start season, he’s had a few injuries and the front three have been doing so well that it’s been difficult to throw him straight back in.

“He’s had to wait his time, he doesn’t sulk, and he came off the bench to score which he’s done a couple of times now.

“It was scrappy at the end, Rothwell could have scored, he just needed to lift the ball over the goalkeeper but he hit it against his thigh, that should be a goal from someone of his quality.

“They’re hard to play against, don’t take chances against you, they’re a growing team and will cause teams problems and they’re above us in the league at the moment.

“Let’s keep going, you can’t be as fluent as we have all season. Every football match is difficult, we did create some chances, but I’d rather be standing here talking about a 2-1 win than a 1-1 draw.”