JOHNNIE Jackson said he was “loving watching this team play” after AFC Wimbledon came from behind for the second consecutive game to claim three League One points at Doncaster Rovers.
After Owen Bailey put the hosts in front early in the second half, Ryan Johnson and Myles Hippolyte scored in the last 20 minutes to give the Dons their fifth win in nine games in their first season back in the third tier.
“I’m just excited for the games at the minute, I’m loving watching this team play, I’m loving their mentality, their work ethic, their attitude and also the football that we’re playing too,” Jackson said.
“Two good teams, highly competitive, but obviously I’ll talk about my team. I thought we were outstanding, I thought we were outstanding.
“With and without the ball, I thought our shape was excellent, limiting a really good team to not too many chances. I thought we contained their threats pretty well.
“We created some moments of our own, scored a couple of lovely goals, probably should have had a third as well, I think [Danilo] Orsi’s offside as well, so that would have sealed the deal nicely, but I think it was an outstanding performance from my team.
“What we’ve done with and without the ball, but also the work rate that the lads put in, the way that they dug in, the way that they saw the game out once we got in front as well – huge credit to the players because they were brilliant today.”
Jackson praised his side’s mental resilience after they fell behind again.
He said: “I’ve got no worries about that anyway with this team, we’ve done it last week, we’ve done it again this week.
“We don’t want to keep going behind. They scored a goal and Joe Lewis had to go off the pitch, so we’re down to ten and they have the extra body for the set-piece, but we should still defend it better.
“We gave ourselves a little bit to do in the game, but the response was brilliant. I felt like when they scored, that was probably the only period in the game, ten to fifteen minutes there, where they were really on top.
“So, to snap ourselves out of that and come again, get the equaliser and then to go on and win it. We showed intent, when we equalised, it wasn’t let’s sit in and play for the draw – we went for the throat.
“We got two and even when we went 2-1 up, we were going for a third as well, but we saw it out and defended it brilliantly.”
Wimbledon, who are ninth, play eighteenth-place Wycombe Wanderers at the earlier time of 12.30pm this Saturday at Plough Lane.
Jackson said: “That won’t be an easy game. I know they haven’t had the start that they wanted, they’ve had a change of manager – that’s going to be a really tough test coming. But we’ll prepare properly for that and we’ll get a clean week to do it.”
