The draw may have meant another fixture for Eastbourne Manager Garry Wilson to contend with but he has nothing but admiration for the way his players performed against Cambridge.

"I'm so proud of the performance the lads gave out there. We came to Cambridge on Saturday after a long period of inactivity and these guys gave us a performance then. They've been working yesterday and today and then travelled up and put that amount of effort against a full-time side was superb.

"I was so pleased with what they gave. They put everything on the line for us tonight and maybe deserved a little bit more than they got."

Although happy with the performance, Wilson was disappointed to give away Danny Crow's first penalty so soon after taking a two goal lead.

"We were delighted when we doubled the lead but to concede so early after scoring the second one was criminal. Whether it was a penalty or not it should have been cut out. It was just a straight ball into the box and we could and should have dealt with it. For both Cambridge's goals to come from penalties was kind of cruel. Especially as we had three glorious chances late on and all it would have taken was composure and a bit of communication and the ball would've been in the back of the net.

"Saying that, Danny Knowles has also made some great saves for us as Cambridge pushed bodies forward and their fitness as fulltime players showed. We had to dig in deep and although we didn't play great football I just thought we showed fantastic commitment."

The Sports boss wasn't surprised in the change of formation Cambridge fielded.

"We were fully aware that Cambridge were going to come at us and take a gamble. They are at home in a cup game and we after all had just beaten them. We played with three in midfield on Saturday, so maybe Martin looked to match that up.

"We expected a bit of a change and I thought we dealt with it fairly well, although Cambridge had a fair bit of the ball our goal wasn't really under siege until the closing stages. Saying that, at that time we were creating at the other end so it wasn't as if the game was going just one way."

With a third meeting between the sides in little over a week Wilson was at least pleased to have a home match to look forward to.

"Since we played Cambridge in the league we have only had the New Years Day fixture against Crawley at home, so we are pleased to bring Cambridge back to ours and we feel it's a fixture we can win.

"When the draw was made we thought Cambridge away was going to be a tricky one, but we've played Cambridge three times recently and not lost any of them and that gives us the confidence to go into the replay and win it."

Interview by David Gray

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