Burnley skipper Shackell stunned by late equaliser

The defender struck in the 32nd minute, smashing Ross Wallace’s free-kick past Jake Kean after his initial header had cannoned back off the post.

That, his first goal for the club, seemed likely to be the match winner at Ewood Park until David Dunn struck deep in to injury time to level the Championship derby.

“I had a few chances but I couldn’t have picked a better game to score my first goal for Burnley,” said Shackell. “It was fantastic. It’s just a shame it wasn’t the winning goal.

“You can see how much it meant to the fans – they were right behind us from the get-go and to score in front of them was an unbelievable feeling.

“It’s just frustrating it wasn’t a match-winning goal.

“You can’t ask any more – a massive derby right in front of our away fans. I’ll take that memory.

“It was a great goal, I just wish it was a match-winner.

“I was lucky it came straight back to me. I was a bit nervous but I found the bottom corner so it was okay.”

Lee Grant barely had a save to make throughout the duration of the fixture, even after the Clarets were reduced to 10 men as Ben Mee was dismissed for a second bookable offence. And Shackell insists that shut-out was down to the character, grit and organisation of his team-mates.

“I thought we deserved more,” he said.

“It was a good performance and we’re really frustrated and disappointed not to get the three points.

“We don’t think we had much to do in the whole game really. That just adds to the frustration. But we’ve got to take a lot of positives out of it – we worked really hard as a team, especially when we went down to 10 men, we stayed compact and showed a lot of character and we were unlucky not to get the win.

“You can’t ask any more – when you’re down to 10 men away from home in the big local derby, we gave everything and we just fell short.

“It’s frustrating but we’ve got to look forward now.”

And when asked about Mee, he added: “He wears his heart on his sleeve, he got a little bit over-zealous and went through him.

“He’s a little bit upset now but we’ll get around him. He’s a great lad, he’ll bounce back from that.

“No-one blames him, it happens and we’ve all been there.

“He’ll bounce back and be ready to go after his suspension.”

Everything seemed to conspire against Burnley in the derby to deny them a first win over their rivals since April 1979. Grant Hanley was lucky to escape a red card when striking Kieran Trippier, after picking up a first half caution for ploughing through the back of Martin Paterson, while the fourth official indicated a minimum of six minutes time added on to be played at the end of the 90.

Those decisions proved pivotal as Sean Dyche’s side missed out on only a second win in 10 league outings.

“The performance was a vast improvement on the last couple of games – we all looked sharp, lively and everyone was on the front foot.

“Coming to a tough place with a team that has a lot of good players, I felt we deserved a lot more than just a point.

“I didn’t feel like we were in any trouble. We had a couple of scraps in the box but we always felt in control, we were compact, as a team we worked our socks off and did everything right, organisation was fantastic. I couldn’t see them scoring.

“Everybody’s really frustrated and disappointed but we’ve got to move on.”

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