FORMER Swindon Town head coach Richie Wellens said his old side deserved the point they earned in a 1-1 draw against Leyton Orient on Saturday.

Wellens, who celebrates a year in charge of Orient in the coming days, watched his current club take the lead through captain, Omar Beckles early on at Brisbane Road.

But Town battled back and equalised through substitute, Jacob Wakeling once the forward converted his one-on-one chance against Lawrence Vigouroux in the second half.

Reflecting on game overall, Wellens said: “In the end, I felt Swindon deserved the point.

“In the first half, we bullied them. We knew they were struggling defensively due to an injury crisis, and we thought we could hurt them.

“But maybe in the second half, we played too many tippy-tappy passes, which is fine, but you have to hurt teams and we didn’t. We didn’t do what we do in training throughout the game.

“It would have been very generous had we been given the penalty for the shout at the end where Paul Smyth went down.

“They have some very good technical players and if you step off then they will punish you, but a draw was a fair result in my opinion.”

READ: Morris really pleased with makeshift Swindon securing draw away at leaders.

The game’s statistics suggested a draw was fair too, with 56 per cent of the ball owned by Orient but four of Town’s eight chances forcing Vigouroux into a save – as opposed to just two of 12 in the opposite direction.

Wellens believed Swindon’s care-free attitude helped the visitors find a way back into the game after half-time while the tension in Orient’s game produced the opposite effect.

He said: “We just let a 20-minute spell, very similar to Grimsby last week, where what’s happening at the moment is you’re playing opposition and before the game [they’re thinking] ‘Oh, these are the best team in the league, we’ve got nothing to lose, blah, blah, blah’.

“And when they go 1-0 down, they come in at half-time and they’ve got even less to lose and then they have a real good go - a real good go. And we’ve just made bad decisions again.

“The goal we conceded was really poor. For a left centre-back to clear it and then a second ball be picked up by a wing-back, and then they go and score, is poor.”