Wilkins brimming with pride

Last updated : 13 January 2008 By The Chairman
Brighton boss Dean Wilkins was brimming with pride at the final whistle after his team has snatched a point in the last minute of the game at Boundary Park. Reduced to 10 men in the ninth minute after his captain Dean Hammond was sent off, he admitted that the atmosphere in the dressing room was one of the best that he has ever experienced.

He told the official Seagulls website, "Having gone down to ten men after only nine minutes and then going a goal behind, to then do what we did in terms of keeping our discipline and trying to remain patient without going for that goal too soon, I just felt that it was one of the best performances that you are ever likely to see. Our record with ten men is phenomenal. I'm not advocating that we play with ten men every week but we have rarely been beaten under those circumstances and that is a testament to a number of things, namely our organisation and the players' attitudes within the organisation that we try to set up. To perform it the way that they did speaks volumes and I thought that to a man they were immense. I thought that they were very brave and competitive. The dressing room was just bouncing at the end and it was one of the best dressing rooms that I have ever been in."

"It's great to see Nathan score. It hasn't been easy for him and he has not had many opportunities, but he has gone on and he has done exactly what we hoped he would do, and it is just a great feeling for everybody. A lot of the players played with a maturity beyond their years today. And then there were the mature ones like Kerry Mayo and Gary Hart who played a huge part in the performance and who I thought were outstanding."