Ryan Johnson felt our defensive resilience in the closing stages and our tremendous away support were the key factors in seeing it through to yet another away win.
Early goals from Josh Davison and Ali Al-Hamadi – his fifteenth for the Dons this season – got our noses in front under the lights at Crawley Town.
However, manager Johnnie Jackson was banished from the touchline, and we were reduced to ten men on the pitch following the sending off of Ryan’s centre-back partner Joe Lewis, all before the hosts pulled a goal back and piled on pressure for a late equaliser.
You can listen to everything Ryan had to say below.
“There are so many different ways to win a football match and sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, get together and grind them out and we did that tonight. The boys have got the ability to do that, and you saw that in abundance,” said Ryan.
"In these kind of games you graft together and pull off moments of brilliance and Alex Bass has been doing that all season. It’s no surprise when he puts one over the bar and catches one, just to calm us all down. He’s vital to what we do.”
Ryan noticed the vocal presence of 1,330 travelling fans in the away end at Broadfield Stadium and the difference they made to our performance.
“They were incredible,” said Ryan. “The noise that they made really spurred us on. In those kind of moments at the end of the game, they’re the ones pushing us along. When you feel like you’ve got nothing left, you want to do it for them.
“We said at half-time, that our fans have come here in numbers on a Friday night and made all that noise – let’s do it for them.”
That was Ryan’s 25th appearance for us since his summer arrival from Stockport. He’s also vowed to bring more goals to his game and add to his one earlier this season at Sutton, our next opponents on Boxing Day, after he was denied by a post in the second half on this occasion.
“I’m going to keep trying to score and be the difference in both boxes,” said Ryan.
“To be honest, I’d like to be getting a lot more goals than I have been. I was gutted when I saw it hit the post! I thought it would roll over the line, but it didn’t. I was just unfortunate tonight.
“Regarding Joe’s sending off – I thought it was soft, personally. It happened and we had to get on with it. I think the lads – especially Alex Pearce when he came on – were amazing. That’s what we’ve got – depth in our squad. We had to use that tonight and thank God that we did!”
Photos: Paul Hazlewood (Pro Sports Images).