Fulham Head Coach Scott Parker was delighted by the resilience shown by his Fulham side on Saturday afternoon at the Riverside Stadium.
After going down to ten men with over three quarters of the game left to play, Fulham dug deep and stood firm to secure a valuable point away from home.
The Head Coach was full of praise of the grit and determination shown by his side to see out the match with only ten men.
“Firstly this is the proudest I have been of this team,” Parker said. “I said that to them after in the changing room.
“I have been in this role now for 6 months and when you look at this division we top many of the stats charts.
“Whether that is possession, whether it is that we produce the most shots on target. We concede the fewest shots on our goal.
“But what the players showed me today you can’t measure. They showed desire, passion, effort and a real mentality about us.
“What we showed today is going to define us. This is a massive moment for us and a certainly a massive moment for me.
“Part of me is a little disappointed because we were in control. And even with ten men we had some good chances.
“I am absolutely delighted and I feel like this is a bit of a moment and I want my players to understand that.
“What we showed today is going to define whether we are successful or not.”
The obvious turning point in the match was the red card incident in the 17th minute when Marek Rodak was shown a straight red for handling the ball outside the area.
An obvious blow at a moment when we were starting to work our way into the match against a Boro side low on confidence.
“We started the game so well,” he said. “We were very good with 11 men.
“We showed a real quality about us and were getting in the right areas.
“We were controlling the game and we looked every bit like a side that was going to go on and win the match.
“The sending off came and we had to change it. We had to dig in and show another side to our game.
“We need to show more of that other side to our game. And today for large parts of the game we showed exactly that.
“We were still a threat with ten men. On the counter we looked like we could cause them problems.”