BOSS Sean O'Driscoll said he felt Cherries' 1-1 draw with League One rivals Tranmere Rovers on Saturday was "probably a fair result".

Cherries fought back to earn a share of the spoils through Matthew Mills after the teenage defender had earlier deflected Paul Hall's shot past Neil Moss to give Rovers the lead.

O'Driscoll said: "I thought there were two good teams out there. I thought it was a great performance and both sides didn't want to lose it, you could see that towards the end.

"But they are a good team on the road and I didn't think we could do much more to try to win the game. I thought we were excellent.

"It was a scruffy goal (to concede), but we just bounced back and it didn't faze us. We kept playing and passing the ball against a big side that is a hard nut to crack. They had lots of experience and I thought the young players in our team did extremely well.

"Tranmere scored five against Wrexham last week and three against Huddersfield in midweek and with Iain Hume they can afford to be nice and tight because they've got a potential match-winner in the side. But we had prepared all week for it and I thought they did everything you could ask to win the game."

O'Driscoll opted to alter the Cherries formation with Steve Fletcher operating as a lone striker, Marcus Browning drafted in to bolster the midfield and leading goalscorer James Hayter dropping down to the substitutes' bench.

He added: "From all the reports we had, they play 3-4-3, but when they lose the ball, it becomes almost a 4-5-1 and they are a good team on the counter-attack.

"We wanted to pass the ball; we didn't want to be stereotypical. They had watched us in midweek so it was just an opportunity to change it and put an extra man in midfield.

"It gave us some extra height as well because they had some big players. Our tactics remained exactly the same; we just altered the formation a little bit."

Rovers opened the scoring in the 22nd minute before O'Driscoll's side hit back when Mills bagged the first goal of his career on the stroke of half-time to keep Cherries in the hunt for a play-off place.

O'Driscoll said: "I didn't think there was much you could do about their goal. This late in the season, the goalmouth is kicking up and the ball bobbled over his foot or hit his shin and it was unfortunate.

"But we didn't let it affect us. We just dusted ourselves down and got on with it. We dominated the next 10 minutes and got a goal back."

When asked if he felt that playing against third-placed Tranmere would stand Cherries in good stead for a series of "important" games against other teams at the top, O'Driscoll replied: "Every game is important.

"We said to them before the game that we've got a 46-game sequence and every game is more important than the last one whether you play top of the league or bottom of the league."