New England Revolution head coach Jay Heaps

I thought it was good fight to the end from our guys. I thought we played well enough to win the game and had some chances, a couple of chances that weren’t awarded. But that said, I thought that when we went down the goal late, we showed a nice fight, and that to me is probably the most positive to take from the game.

The (Jerry) Bengtson goal is onside. I’ve already seen the replay on that. I don’t want to comment further besides to say that was a goal. What do you do? That’s tough, because to me that changes the entire game. Whenever we’ve come out early and scored, and then we hit the bar after, for me the first half was a good up-tempo part of the game. We dictated the game. But fortunately it doesn’t always go your way and unfortunately that’s the second one this season in that same goal that’s been disallowed that we’ve been told is completely the wrong call.

That said, I thought we responded well after the goal. Listen … there is so much to fight for. We are in the process of building something. We took a lot of steps forward; we’ve obviously taken a few steps back. I wanted to be fighting for the playoffs right now, but we’re not. But that doesn’t mean, day-in and day-out, pushing the best teams in this league. And that’s something we pride ourselves on. Obviously the results haven’t gone our way. Real men go in the locker room and find a way. We’re trying to build that. We’re trying to get our guys to respond like they did tonight, when they’re down a goal after the 93rd minute and they know they have a minute left. They pull their socks out and get something out of nothing.

That (Flo Lechner injury) hurt us. That hurt our attacking subs later. Flo Lechner’s played really well. There isn’t a more disappointed guy in that locker room than Flo. Same thing happened to us against Toronto. When you lose a defender in the first half, you’re forced to make the sub, change it a little bit. But then when we wanted to bring one more attacking player on and switch up the formation, we couldn’t get to that 3-5-2 that we really wanted to because our attacking players were already subbed on.

You’ve got to pick yourselves up. The game of soccer is cruel. We’ve had a pretty heavy dose of it this season. That said, it doesn’t matter. The game forgets quickly. We have to earn our stripes and tonight was a way of doing that. We’ve talked about it. When we’ve scored goals, we’ve given up goals right away because that’s when the game just seems to have emotion. They’re celebrating, they’re wasting time and everything was going our way for the karma to turn to be our chance. And Darrius Barnes just went up and took it. It was nice to see. I’d rather it be three points, but it wasn’t.

That’s important. Obviously the focus is winning. The focus is preparing our guys to fight and battle like tonight, but you saw tonight we made two changes to the line-up tonight from last week, in Bobby Shuttleworth and A.J. Soares. Bobby Shuttleworth, for me, when he got injured – he unfortunately got injured right around the end of July – right after he’d started two games, played well. He and Matt (Reis) were pushing. We’re at a place now where Bobby’s fully healthy and we’re getting a chance to see him over one, two, three – I don’t have a number of games, but I wanted to let him know he has a couple of chances to really show where his trajectory is going to be. Whether it’s top-class goalkeeper where we think he can go, he needs time. He needs opportunity and tonight was about getting him that. A.J.’s the same thing. We know A.J.’s been fighting hard all season and tonight was about rotation. We’re going to see some more players over the next couple of weeks, as well.

New England Revolution defender Darrius Barnes

I thought Lee (Nguyen) hit a good free kick in (on the shot that went wide earlier). I jumped too early. I didn't time it as well as I could have. It was a definite opportunity. I thought we were going to get a goal off a set piece or a cross with the way the balls were coming in. I guess it foreshadowed the goal a little bit.

I was fortunate enough to get my first career goal tonight. It was at a fortunate time for us. Kudos to the team. We kept fighting. We came in at halftime and we thought we were out-playing them and out-working them all across the park. When they got that goal, we didn't let it deflate us. We kept pushing. We got numbers forward and kept putting numbers into the box. When you put balls into the box, anything can happen. I was fortunate to get on the end of Ryan Guy's perfect ball into the box.

Initially, I made the run forward. I think the first ball might have come from Bobby (Shuttleworth) off a goal kick or a ball back. I wanted to get up and flick it on. It went out wide to Kelyn (Rowe), so I recycled my run. He laid it back to Ryan Guy. I was just trying to cause havoc in the box. It came in a perfect spot and I was able get in front of the goalkeeper and put in the back of the net.

I keep telling Jay I'm a target forward. He doesn't believe me.

Finally. It kind of felt like LeBron (James) winning his first championship. It's been a long time coming. It's just great that it came at that point in time, when we were down and they had just scored a goal in the 91st minute. We were able to have that resiliency and come back to get one of our own. It helped us to get a point, but we were unfortunate not to get three. We definitely had some great chances in the first half where we thought.

New England Revolution goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth

(The coaches) told me Friday, so not too much notice. Just Friday.

The guys in front of me were really good tonight. We kept really good lines. (Stephen McCarthy) did really well; he came in and did really well. A.J. (Soares) was really good. Darrius (Barnes) and Kevin (Alston), everyone was good. We didn’t give up much except for the goal at the end.

It comes to (Wilman) Conde. I’m at the near post because he could take a shot, it comes across and I hear A.J. shout my name. I tried to kind of pick it off his head instead of punching through it, which is what I should have done. And then unfortunately I fell down and (Joel) Lindpere was there to clean it up.

I think it’s a great response by us. Darrius (Barnes) has been looking for one and he’s been very close. He had one in the first half where he was extremely close, so I thought he did really well there. He came up real big and able to get the ball in the goal.

We had the better of the chances. It’s hard not to take three points from this but we’ll move on. We go to Houston next try to get a result there and try and get the momentum going into next year.

When (Jay Heaps and I) talk, all he’s looking for is consistency from me to play well, which is what any manager is looking for. So hopefully that’s what I’m trying to give to him and going forward.

It seems like the past couple of seasons I seem to get a run of games here at the end. It’s been a long season for us and for me personally. I’ve only played in two games. It’ll be nice. All the games they want to give me here, it’s nice obviously. It’s nice to get a nice run of games where I can kind of get some momentum going and get comfortable and try and be consistent in there.

New York Red Bulls head coach Hans Backe

That kind of stuff happens. Of course when you go one player down and can still match them in a decent way and then of course when you score that late with 10. You can’t get much closer to picking up three points

I’ve been here and this is my third year and we have tied I don’t know how many times. As I said you can’t get much closer to this.

There were a couple of subs. I think he (the referee) can do 30 seconds for each sub so I thought (stoppage time) was quite ok.

They didn’t create any chances when we were one player down. I think the back four defended well, the midfield the same. Tim (Cahill) fighting enormously up front to get hold of the ball. Overall I think it was a decent defensive performance.

It’s no excuse. It’s a difficult pitch to play on. It’s bumpy. You need to handle the ball. You need more touches on the ball. It’s difficult to get a rhythm in the attacking game or the passing game. But it’s the same for every team but that’s the way it is.

We checked with (Rafa Marquez) and we said let’s do five minutes more and see how it works. I think it went perhaps 10-15 minutes more before he said it’s his hamstring, or a tired muscle … I think it’s more it’s the third game in a week so probably it’s more of a fatigue muscle. For that many months you can say in the few games that he’s been playing then going to three games in a week.

“It worked ok. We have subs we can use who can fit in these positions, so it worked well.”

(Thierry Henry) doesn’t play on turf. So even if he weren’t suspended he wouldn’t have played the game.

If you look at the standings, 52 (points) compared to 50 (points) is a huge difference. It will be down to the wire. Four games to go and if Columbus pick up points winning then I think they’ll have 46 points. It’s still very, very even but it’s still in our hands. I think we have three home games out of the last four so we just need to take care of our own business.

New York Red Bulls midfielder Joel Lindpere

We’ve seen that Tim (Cahill) is a great header and everybody knows it. He jumps high and basically he won the header and the ball was open and I was first on the ball.

I don’t care if you need to go in, then you need to go in. Of course you need a couple of minutes to warm up. Fortunately, I got the notice earlier, so I could warm up. I was ready when I came in and I felt good.

The thing is that we were a man down, and if they scored in the 80th minute or something then it’s understandable. When you score in the 90th minute and you get this air balloon ball in the box and nobody is taking care of it, then it feels bad and in this situation when we know that we haven’t won here in 10 years and they give you a gift of the 3 points and then you just don’t use it. It’s like a gift card you throw away. So nothing to do. It’s frustrating. We didn’t lose but it feels like losing.

That’s why maybe it even opens up our game and we defended well. They wanted to show that they were home and they wanted to score and that opens up opportunities for us to counter. We were already close to getting some good counterattacks at this time and we scored one. Before the game and in the first 15 minutes, I was hoping that please there is not goal against us, and in the first quarter there was no goal and I was thinking that if they had opportunities to score they didn’t use it. So then I was thinking that we’re going to win this game. And we were so close and we just as a team couldn’t manage this. It’s a tough situation and nothing to do with our strength in keeping the result. There is still time to look at replays and stuff and look over what we should do but we have done it the whole year. The time is coming and now it’s the final games and we need to go home and just take this how it is. We didn’t lose but it feels bad.

We’re already in this situation because we know what’s behind. If we had won today, it’s one more win and we’re in for sure. But now we make it difficult on ourselves. But we’re a strong team and I think we’re going to definitely reach the playoffs, but we need that advantage so it makes it easier for us. If we can’t get that win in before the playoffs and if we can’t handle it, it’s going to be much more difficult.

New York Red Bulls midfielder Tim Cahill

I thought it was good. I thought we were compact. I thought we played very well. It’s difficult, my first experience playing on turf. Probably we’re just all disappointed we conceded so late. I don’t know where (the referee) got the four minutes extra time from but it was a good game. Tough place to come. What can you do? We went down to 10 men, battled on well and that’s football, I suppose.

We didn’t sit back, we actually kicked on. We made sure we kept pressing and the good thing was we were confident. All of us are disappointed with a draw here. I’m happy my teammates are upset with the result today. The good thing is we’ve had a lot of games this week and hopefully we can get a good rest this week because it looks like it’s taken its toll. But we’ve done well over the last couple weeks.

That’s football. I enjoy that. I think that’s the way the game should be played. It was stop-start if that’s what you mean, but I enjoyed it and I think for us we took the fight to them and we went to win the game. In the end its unfortunate we conceded. Again, collectively we take responsibility and it’s been a big week for us.