Barnsley boss Michael Duff was proud of his players after they suffered defeat in the Sky Bet League One Play-Off Final against Sheffield Wednesday following Josh Windass’ strike in injury time of extra time.

Duff thought his Barnsley side were unfortunate not to take the game all the way to penalties after having 10 men for over an hour.

“It’s the cruellest way I’ve ever been beaten.”

“It’s a cruel game. Frustration is the overriding emotion, again. I thought the players gave us absolutely everything today. That’s all you can ask for. Walking into an arena like this, and there’s obviously going to be regrets but none of theirs. They did everything they could.”

“There is pride within it, but yeah, it’s just a tough one to take.”

“Even then we created some good chances, we’ve hit the crossbar, Luca (Connell) has had an unbelievable chance. There’s no guarantee that we would’ve won the penalty shoot-out but I think that would’ve been a fairer way to lose if there is one. There is lots of tears, they’re a young group and sometimes in football you’ve got to learn the hard way.

“I thought it was a booking. I think it’s a mis-timed tackle. I don’t think there’s any malice in it, I don’t think there’s any intent to hurt the player. I think he’s gone to take the ball and the lad (Lee Gregory) has just nicked it away from him (Adam Phillips).

“You’ve got to give Sheffield Wednesday credit. They were factually the third best team in the league. Darren has done a brilliant job, 96 points, but I don’t think they were the best team today. We just fell the wrong side of big decisions.”

“You look at what the players give the supporters, you look at what the supporters give the players, you know they’re outnumbered two to one. Outnumbered on the pitch for 60-70 minutes and they gave everything, both sides. And the reception the players got from the supporters at the end having been beaten, I think that shows a real sign of how far the football club has come in the last ten months.”

“I’m not thinking of anything other than licking our wounds and going again.”

“I’m pretty confident at the end of the season when everyone said we had no momentum and you’d lost this and lost that… I see them work every day. It’s work every day. You can’t just turn that performance on, you can’t fight like that and have that level of fitness without doing it day in, day out.

“I imagine we’ll lose a couple – it’s the model of the football club. There’s players going into the final year of their contract and I’m not in control of that. One thing I don’t think we’ll do, I don’t think we’ll lose five or six of the starting 11 which we did last summer. So whatever we do next season, we’ll be starting on a stronger foothold.”

“You thought the real big moment of the game was Luca’s chance, because I think if that goes in, we win the game. We made some good blocks and Harry has made a couple of decent saves but they’re a really good team, you look at the players they’ve got, they’ve played at a much higher level so there was some real, real positives.”


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