Mark Robins felt his side were deserving off all three points in the draw with Rovers and reflected on a ‘travesty’ of a red card and ‘a pudding of a pitch’.

In the end they left Ewood Park with a point after Matty James equalised early in the second half after Ben Brereton's 27th minute opener for Rovers. 

Rovers won the reverse fixture 4-0 in October and Robins felt the display at Ewood was a reflection of how far his side have come in that time as they remain clear of the relegation zone.

The one blight on the afternoon for Robins was the late red card for Leo Ostigard, his first yellow card coming when reacting angrily following an aerial challenge with Rovers captain Darragh Lenihan, while his second wasn't a foul in the eyes of his manager. 

“I thought we were brilliant in the first half,” Robins said after the match.

“I thought we started brightly, we controlled the game, they didn’t really have anything in an attacking sense in the opening 25 minutes and then for some inexplicable reason we started giving the ball away to them, which gave them a foothold, and they’ve got quality players in the final third.

“You can’t switch off for a second but we gave them a sniff and they ended up scoring the goal. We got the press wrong and they managed to get the ball across the box with the power that they’ve got on the right-hand side with (Ryan) Nyambe.

“We didn’t deal with the ball across the box very well and it was a blow.

“It’s then about reactions. I was pleased to get to half-time intact and to be able to regroup a little bit.

“The second-half was a lot better out of possession. It was a really difficult surface to play on, a pudding of a pitch, but both teams tried to do that.

“We moved the ball better when we had it in the second-half, we had a bit more purpose without the ball and away from home that’s what we have to do because, as you know, our away form hasn’t been good enough.

“But this week’s away performances have proven we can play to a really good level even though we’ve not got the points that we feel we deserve.

“We deserved something from Swansea and we certainly deserved the three points today.

“Bearing in mind we lost 4-0 to them at home earlier in the season, it’s a big step forward for us.”

Robins credited Brereton’s finish, firing home from the edge of the area after being found by Nyambe’s cross. He said: ‘on that pitch it was a good finish’.

Right sided defender Ostigard had enjoyed a fine game up until his late red card, his first yellow card coming in the 69th minute before a second with eight minutes remaining.  And Robins had sympathy with his on-loan defender.

“To go down to 10 men was a travesty,” he added.

“The reaction from Leo was unusual. You can see there are two stud marks, two scrawls down his legs from where he was stamped on in the box, which led to him getting his first yellow card.

“Then after that for the second I didn’t see there was anything in it but the referee got his cards out pretty quickly to send him off, and obviously that’s another blow to us because we were trying to win the game and then it was just a case of just trying to hold on.

“He didn’t need to go and do that, to make the referee make a decision but it wasn’t a yellow card challenge by any stretch.”