Rotherham and Wycombe share the spoils in a tough battle

Two of League One’s big hitters failed to find the breakthrough in a fiery stalemate that extends both sides unbeaten runs.

When these teams met each other on the opening day of their Championship campaigns, the ball was only in play for a remarkable 35 minutes and 50 seconds (lowest time recorded since 2013/14) and that strain of play wasn’t too dissimilar to how this evening’s fixture went.

Tempers started to boil right from the off as Josh Scowen went down from an Ollie Rathbone challenge which caused the Irishman, Daryl Horgan, to start one of the many handbags that occurred at the New York Stadium.

Ryan Tafazolli had two of his headed efforts fly over the bar whilst Rotherham lacked “guile of the final third”, as Paul Warne admitted. Wycombe’s predominant attacking outlet came through the counter-attacking combinations of Garath McCleary and Daryl Horgan combining, yet neither could deliver the goods for the 244 travelling Chairboys.

The closest either side came to scoring was from Joe Jacobson’s free-kick that was palmed onto the post by Josh Vickers. Warne lauded Jacobson as the “league’s best set-piece taker” and that was another example to affirm his statement.

Ben Wiles continued to shine as his excellent body feints and movement kept Wycombe wary all evening, as did Chiedozie Ogbene. ‘Chieo’ replaced the injured Mattock after 27 minutes and looked dangerous whenever he was fed the ball - not dangerous enough, however, to break Wycombe’s 270 minutes without conceding a goal.

Rotherham’s unbeaten run stretches to eight, whilst the Chairboys are unbeaten in five. Warne acknowledged Wycombe’s quality divulging that “if we’re a point above or a point below Wycombe then we’ll be right up there (playoff places).”