Noel Hunt hailed the character of his Reading side after they scored twice in the final quarter to keep their League One play-off push going with a 2-1 victory at Wigan.
Only the brilliance of Wigan goalkeeper Sam Tickle kept the game goalless at half-time and it looked as though it would not be Reading’s day when skipper Jason Kerr nodded Wigan in front on the hour mark.
However, Tickle was finally beaten with 19 minutes remaining when Jayden Wareham converted Charlie Savage’s cross and Reading secured all three points with five minutes left when, after the visitors were denied by the crossbar and Tickle again, Tyler Bindon lashed the ball home from close range.
“It is what the boys have been made of, all the time I’ve been here,” said Hunt, who ended his long playing career with a League One-winning campaign at Wigan in 2017-18.
“We keep getting stronger through games and keep going. At half-time I said how good we had been without being ‘us.’
“At times in the first half, we moved the ball really well, but we got sucked into the slow game that they wanted to play
and I didn’t like it.
“When we upped the tempo, we got chance after chance. It was about not getting sucked into the opposition’s way of playing.
“We are young so it’s easily done, but it’s about staying focused on what we did. I thought we were the better side.”
Another bonus for the Royals was the return from a near 11-month absence of Andy Yiadom, who came off the bench for the final half-hour.
“It has been a long time out,” added Hunt. “He’s had a tough 10-and-a-half months, so I’m so happy.
“He’s a great leader. He’s nowhere near where he wants to be and, even today, I was, ‘Do I bring him on or not?’ We needed steel and, when he came on, he settled us down and did great.”
For Wigan boss Shaun Maloney it was a step back following the midweek victory over promotion-chasing Huddersfield.
“I think it was a fair result,” he said. “The performance was way below the level we showed three or four days ago.
“I know we went 1-0 up, although at that point I didn’t think there was much in the game.
“We were a lot better without the ball in the first 15-20 minutes of the second half, but all through the game we were really poor with the ball.
“We could have got it forward into some good areas more, because when we did play how we wanted to play and try to hurt them, we ended up near their box.
“Then we’re relying on the creativity of the attacking players and I think some of them definitely had quieter games.
“But it’s not just on the attacking players. I thought even in the build-up and how we try to play, we didn’t play into the areas we really wanted to.
“So I can’t say it was just the attackers who had their lowest-level games, because it was throughout the team.
“Overall I think we got what we deserved.”
