Swindon Town 3 Hereford United 3

A LAST-minute equaliser from a delighted Harry Pell meant Hereford conjured an unlikely away point at the County Ground.

Pell got on the end of a Joe Heath cross to thump a magical header pass Mattia Lanzano to notch his first Football League goal and earn a draw which had seemed beyong the bounds of possibility at the interval with the Bulls two goals adrift.

“I thought that first goal was never coming,” said Pell.

“I’m just so glad to get it under my belt and now I hope I can go on to get a few more.

“I’m delighted to have helped the team to pick up a point and now we’ll hope to push on, get a few more points on the board and get up that table.”

Hereford had been given a battering in the first half and had fallen behind after just seven minutes.

Mehdi Kerrouche swung in a free-kick from the left and Rafaelle De Vita got in front of the Bulls defence to head past Russell Hoult.

United survived a few anxious moments before a seemingly inevitable second goal arrived five minutes before the interval.

Kerrouche received the ball from Matt Ritchie and sent Stefan Stam sprawling with a neat side-step before beating Hoult.

In the second half, United deployed all three substitutes – Pell, Sam Winnall and Yoann Arquin – to good effect.

Winnall supplied the pass for Tom Barkhuizen to smash a cross-shot into the top corner of the net.

And it was Arquin who got on the end of another excellent cross from Heath to head his first goal in the Football League.

But the rally seemed set to go unrewarded when Swindon opened up the Hereford defence again for Simon Ferry to restore the home side’s lead with just 11 minutes to go.

Hereford continued to battle away, though, and were rewarded with just seconds of normal time remaining and evoking memories of the 12th game of last season when United fought back to win at Northampton from a 3-0 half-time deficit.

“We rang the changes at half-time but there was some passion in our first-half performance,”

said Heath, whose crosses from the left played such a decisive part in the result.

“We had pressed them well and at half-time we still believed we could get something out of the game.

“The fresh legs came on and we hit them where it hurt. It was a good header from Yoann to get on the end of the cross and another good header from Harry Pell.

“Gary Peters came in during the week and we have changed the way we play. We pressed further up the field and the whole team was playing higher up the field and it has worked today because we got a result.”

He added: “We’ve got two big games coming up and we need to get something out of those so I’m sure we shall be preparing properly for those.”