SWINDON Town head coach Ben Garner said his team made their 3-1 victory away at Oldham Athletic “harder than it needed to be.”

Town were dominant for large portions of the League Two fixture at Boundary Park and went two goals ahead thanks to goals from Harry McKirdy and Tyreece Simpson.

Oldham captain Carl Piergianni halved the deficit late on, only to see Simpson kill the game in the 94th minute.

But as over 500 Town fans travelled home happy with what they’d seen, the club’s head coach felt his team had room for improvement.

Garner said: “The first half was very good, and I was really, really pleased – the only thing I would say is we probably made it harder than we needed to, if I’m honest.

“But we continue the great away form, it was a great away performance, and great credit to the players.”

Before Simpson added his second in the 80th minute, the 19-year-old saw an earlier tap-in ruled out when the ball appeared to trickle over the by-line prior to Jack Payne’s low cross.

Garner was perplexed by the decision, and accused the linesman of “robbing” Simpson of a first career hat-trick.

He said: “We just needed to be a little more ruthless with our finishing. Saying that, we’ve had a perfectly good goal disallowed.

“I can’t understand how a linesman on the opposite side has disallowed it for the ball going out of play. I’ve seen it again, it’s not even close to going out of play.

“He’s just robbed a 19-year-old of his first senior hat-trick, which is disappointing, but I’m really pleased for Tyreece to get the two.

“It would have been nice to make it a bit easier than it was in the end, it should never have been that close, and we need to learn from that going forward. But overall, it was very pleasing.”