Monday 10th April 2000 : Bristol Rovers match reactions

Roy McFarland believes his team are well-placed in the six club relegation scrap after taking a point from Bristol Rovers, but he has described next Saturday's match at fellow strugglers Cardiff City as "a huge one for the club."

The Bristol Evening Post reports that McFarland overheard Rovers boss Ian Holloway speaking about the stress affecting his side after Saturday's draw and countered, "Stressful? In your position? You want to see what it’s like at our end of the table!"

The U's boss also criticised Trevor Benjamin's performance despite the young striker's eighth goal in his last eight appearances and told the Cambridge Evening News: "I don't know why Trevor got the sponsors' man-of-the-match award. He was hardly in the game. We need a lot more from him as we fight to stay out of the relegation zone in the last five matches.

"My challenge to him was to take over the role of Martin Butler. He's getting the goals, but not producing the performances lately. The thing that made Martin such an important player was that he ran his socks off for the team. Trevor has to work much harder. He's not distracted, no-one is tapping him up, he's just got into a rut he must break out of. With a more positive approach from him we could have won this game."

The Moosenet mailing list had another gathering at the match and voted Scott Eustace (left) their own man of the match. The defender collected a bottle of champagne from the list members after the match but admitted to the CEN, "When Bristol stepped up the tempo in the second half they played well and deserved their point. I should think a lot of their play, especially when Walters got going, must have been good to watch."

Rovers striker Jamie Cureton, who was denied the winning goal by a brilliant save from Lionel Perez, told the Bristol Evening Post, "We’re pleased with a point because we played so poorly in the first half. You probably have to look back a long way to think of a worse performance. But we’re disappointed with the result, too, because we expected to come here and win. And after equalising so soon after the break that disappointment is worse because we thought we would go on to get another goal."