Williams happy to claim Cobblers' late equaliser at Exeter as his own

Trailing 2-1 with seconds of normal time remaining at St James Park on Saturday, David Buchanan delivered a pinpoint corner and the ball veered into Christy Pym’s bottom corner via a sizeable deflection off Exeter’s Jayden Stockley to salvage a draw for the Cobblers – but Williams was adamant he also got a touch.

“Obviously I’m delighted,” he said. “The goals was a dubious one but I’m happy to run off claiming it!

“It was important. We were 2-1 down and the gaffer wanted me to do a job.

“I was disappointed not to start to be honest but thankfully I had enough time to get on the score sheet and managed to nick us a point.

“It took the slightest of touches off me and it may also have touched someone else afterwards but I think if I’ve touched it, it’s a goal for me – at least that’s what I’m hoping!

“I’m happy with the goal but more importantly it was a good point away from home. If we’re honest with ourselves, we weren’t as good as we have been of late and that’s frustrating because if we perform to our full ability we could have got all three points.

“But nevertheless it’s always good to keep the momentum going and not lose games and that’s something we’ve massively improved on, so it was a good away point.”

Williams also credited manager Keith Curle for his part in the goal, adding: “The gaffer told me to make the run off the goalkeeper. We had a couple of corners previously and Stockley just cleared them.

“My instructions when I came on was to be on the goalkeeper. I’m usually attacking from the edge of the box but I was assigned a different role to start on the keeper and peel off to the man in the middle, which was Stockley.

“He instructed me to do that and it ended up in a goal so you could call him a genius!”

Town’s other goal on the day was no less scrappy as an Exeter clearance rebounded off Billy Waters and into the net, but nonetheless Williams was full of praise for his team-mate’s general display.

“I genuinely thought Billy was brilliant,” he continued. “He carried the ball forward so many times and skipped past their defence like they weren’t even there at times.

“He might be frustrated he didn’t get more, maybe another goal or an assist, but he was in the right place at the right time for his goal and he’ll be like me and want to kick-on.

“Everyone loves him in the dressing room and he’s a great lad so we all want him to be successful.”