AFC Wimbledon’s performance against Cardiff City at a sold-out Plough Lane on Tuesday night has given boss Johnnie Jackson confidence they will have a good season in League One, despite their 1-0 defeat.
Brian Barry-Murphy’s visitors won it in the 92nd minute when Chris Willock’s cross was cleared to David Turnbull and his shot from the edge of the box went in off Isaak Davies.
Dons centre-back Joe Lewis had to be replaced on 27 minutes as he was struggling with injury, Riley-Jay Harbottle coming on.
Alistair Smith had a 35-yard shot saved by Bluebirds goalkeeper by Nathan Trott and Omar Bugiel sent a late effort wide before Davies stuck out a leg to net the winner.
“I thought it was a really good game,” Jackson said. “I’m really proud of them tonight. We had to suffer at times against a really good team. We had to stay in the game but then we earned the right to then really try and turn the screw and try and go and win the game and ultimately we’ve lost it trying to win it.
“Which is frustrating, but I can live with that for the way that my team played tonight and the way that they ran and fought and just tried to do everything that we asked of them.
“We’ll be all right, we’ll be all right. If we play like that every week, we’re going to be fine.
“They’re a really good side, they’ve got some really talented players and I felt like in the first half we were probably a little bit passive with that and we tried to be a lot more aggressive in the second half.
“We spoke at half-time, we’ve almost gone man-for-man really in the second half and got after them. Very, very difficult to do for a whole game, but we felt like we got to the stage of the game where we could do that.
“We made the changes that gave us a little bit more energy and then we’re putting them on the back foot. They’ve got the quality that can cut through you and counter-attack on you, which happened a couple of times but we’ve asked so many questions of them.
“Obviously, we haven’t got the goal that we probably deserved. You’d rather have one of the worldies go in, I suppose, or a bit of good play where the centre-forward has the header, but it was a bit of a scramble in the end and just a little nick in the penalty box cost us.
“But I thought we were brilliant. If we continue to do stuff like that, we’re going to win a lot of games playing like that.”
Jackson added: “They’ve all got roles to play. Every single player in the squad I should be able to rely on, but we’re going to have to do this. It’s the start of the season, we’ve had a lot of games already and people are going to get injured and all that.
“It’s not only about eleven players. If the ones that aren’t picked can show the attitude and then the willingness when they come on, then that means you’re in a really good spot. Again, massive credit to the group, to the boys, the whole squad.
“I really liked what I saw tonight. I don’t like the result, because I don’t like losing and neither do they, so they’ll be disappointed, because they don’t want pats on the backs for one-nil defeats. But tonight I think they deserve some praise and some credit for how they went about it.”
There was an attendance of 8,452 packed into Plough Lane.
Jackson said: “Outstanding. Outstanding as always, but I think they could feel the energy.
“We were building momentum in the game and the crowd could feel that and then the players were feeding off of that, and it felt like that we were going to go on and win it.
“Then at the moment it’s taken away from you, but it was certainly not through lack of effort from everyone inside the stadium tonight to go and try and win that game of football.
“It didn’t quite work out for us tonight but it was a really good game of football and it was great to be here and hear Plough Lane in that sort of voice. Just a shame we couldn’t get the win for them.
“The boys are fine. They’ll be all right. They’ve got to recover physically is the only thing that I’m thinking about now. They’ll be fine, they’ll go again and if we can find that level of performance on a regular basis, we win a lot of games.
“Barnsley are another good team that pose a different type of test. We’ll do as much work on them as we can in the limited time that we’ve got, but I have to concentrate on my players and getting them as fresh as they can and getting them to the start line to try and go and perform like that again.”
Wimbledon host Barnsley on Saturday at 3pm.
