"It's incredible. It's the most bizarre game I have ever experienced and can remember in my entire footballing life.
"I have to applaud the players who were out on the pitch and their endeavours because we have not prepared for a game like that in preseason. We had one player out there who should have come off before extra time and was lucky to last the game, Jacob Mellis and we were really playing with eight outfield players.
"It's great reward for the players. It was a great start from Rochdale and they were superb. They didn't take us by surprise, we were expecting it, but once the 15-20 minutes elapsed and the energy slightly ebbed away from them we started to really get into the game and managed it to great effect.
"We got a great equaliser and in the second half we were in the ascendancy and got the goal and it was just a routine 2-1 coming to the end of the match, Ben (Alnwick) has got the ball in his hands, 90 minutes on the clock, after that - unexplainable what has happened. I don’t think the ramifications of possibly losing this game would have been any worse than they are now having won the game with Luke Steele being out and Ben possibly looking at a three, maybe four game suspension.
“We’d done everything we could in preparation for Ben to play this season knowing what is wrong with Luke and in one game, everything we’ve done in preparing our goalkeeper with our back four to the way that we play with respect to his distribution, which has been magnificent, has been thrown out of the window for one petulant lapse of concentration. I will have to bring another goalkeeper now, no question about it.
"If not for Bobby Hassell we may have been beaten. We were stood on the touchline not sure who to put in goal and then we turned round and Bobby Hassell has got the green jersey on. His distribution and his saves were magnificent.