Skipper felt desire to win was evident

MARK Roberts said he was pleased with Boro’s victory against Burton Albion following a ‘surreal’ first half.

Stevenage’s captain had been shown a yellow card on 24 minutes for a foul on Lewis Young and was substituted on 51 minutes to avoid him picking up a second in a stormy encounter which saw referee Trevor Kettle flash eight yellow cards and a red to Roberts’ replacement Luke Foster.

“It was a bit of a surreal first half and there seemed to be a lot of incidents in the first half especially but you have to learn to cope with that and make sure you’re the ones to come out on top,” Roberts said afterwards.

“A couple of decisions the referee was making, it did look like – you don’t want to talk about the referee too much – but it did seem that the decisions were going to go against us. The gaffer took us off and Fozzie (Foster) I thought was really harsh to be sent off.

“Three points are what we wanted to get and that was the most important thing to take away from this afternoon. It’s pushed us up the table and that’s a great thing for us.

“We were very disappointed how we performed at home last time (when Boro lost 2-0 to Wycombe Wanderers) and I think today the performance showed and the desire going into the game was obvious to see.”