Royle told Latics World, "We improved drastically in the second half; we were a threat, missed two open-goal headers and then equalised with the scrappiest chance we had. I'm pleased for the fans, and I genuinely mean that. It's been a cold night and they must've been wondering whether the money they spent to come was worth it. It was nice to see a goal for us at their end. There's no other way of describing the half-time talk. I was thinking, 'how has this team been in the play-offs all season?' But by the end of the game I had an enthusiasm and an idea about things going forward. In the first half we were outpassed and outplayed by a side who are probably going down, but we improved after the break. Sean Gregan was outstanding over the 90 minutes, Shane did well in goal and Daniel Jones dragged us forward in the second half."
"We need to start on Saturday playing like we did in the second half tonight. We've got players coming back, such as Stefan Stam who did well on Saturday until he was sent off. Westlake will be back too and we must see more from him than we have so far. But he's young, he's legs and he's energetic. Most importantly we need someone from either in the squad or coming from outside it to put the ball in the net."
Danny Whitaker described his goal, "We had chances but it looked like being one of those nights. Daniel Jones put in a great cross from the left and it's broken to Mark, who couldn't get a shot off but managed to chase his own rebound. He managed to roll the ball back across the box and fortunately I was in the right place at the right time to put it in. We were sloppy in the first half and were on the back foot, but we came out well in the second half and deserved something from the game. I'm pleased for the fans as well because we lost on Saturday and it's a long way down here. They backed us again and we got there in the end."