Defender Anthony Tonkin was pleased after helping the U’s fight back from a goal down to draw 1-1 at his old club Crewe on Saturday.

Dave Artell headed Crewe in front, before James Constable, on his 100th start for the U’s levelled with his seventh goal of the campaign, only to be sent off two minutes from time for a second bookable offence.

Tonkin spent three years at the Railwaymen, making 84 appearances after joining from Stockport for £150,000, before leaving for Yeovil, having received some excellent coaching from Crewe legend Dario Gradi.

“It’s always nice to come back to your old club,” said Tonkin, who received a superb reception from the Crewe fans when his name was announced on the PA system.

“I’ve got quite a good record when I have played against Crewe for other clubs.

“The first time I came back here was with Yeovil and we won. And today we haven’t been beaten, so I’m pretty happy.

“It wasn’t a bad point for us today.

“I thought the sending off for James Constable was very harsh.

“I feel sorry for him because he has been working so hard on his discipline.

“I thought he did really well to track their left back and didn’t think there was much contact.

“There are going to be worse challenges than that.”

Although Tonkin wasn’t happy with the dismissal of Constable, he did praise the referee for disallowing a strike by Shaun Miller for offside.

“The crowd can be quite intimidating here because they are very close to the pitch here,” he said.

“He was brave to disallow their second ‘goal’.

“We appealed to the linesman that their man was offside and we actually won it. I was quite impressed.”

Tonkin said he felt the Crewe goal came against the run of play.

“I thought we were looking comfortable and then they scored from a set piece, which normally we are pretty good at defending.

“We then had to come out and work them. We weren’t at our best, but we just had to roll our sleeves up.”