Russell Howarth today thanked his City team-mates for giving him an easy ride after being thrust in at Rotherham.

Howarth was summoned from the bench after Donovan Ricketts

suffered a foot injury midway through the first half.

The back-up keeper marked his unexpected debut with a steady start as City battled for a 1-1 draw.

But Howarth insisted the real praise should be heaped on the other players for keeping the home side at bay.

"They did a great job in front of me," he said. "You need the lads to give that sort of protection when you come into a situation like that.

"It was hard because we were on the backfoot already and had a lot of

corners against us. You wouldn't wish anyone getting injured but as a goalkeeper, you don't have time to think about it. But overall we defended superbly right through the team and that's what you need when you go to tough places like Rotherham.

"It won't be pretty and you're going to be under pressure but good teams withstand that and we did."

City will assess Ricketts - who went down as he cleared under pressure from Deon Burton. But Howarth is likely to stay in for tomorrow's Carling Cup trip to Rochdale.

Colin Todd said: "I've got no problems with Russell. He produced a great save from a free-kick and got a feel straight away which brought his confidence up.

"He didn't have that much to do because of the volume of balls coming into the box that we dealt with.

"We'll look at Donovan to see the extent of the problem but I'm not sure what happened because their boy didn't follow through.

"If the injury is going to be long-term we'll have to think about bringing in another keeper. But the transfer window kills us because we can't take players from the Premiership like we used to."

Dean Windass nodded a late equaliser with his fourth goal of the season.

Todd admitted: "That's the most difficult game we've had and we had to produce a bit of brilliance on the goal to come away with a point."