Shrewsbury boss Paul Hurst understands key penalty decision

Town went ahead in the clash after George Lloyd scored his first Salop goal heading in Mal Benning's cross after a good counter-attack midway through the first half.

But the game's controversial moment came when Benning was penalised for a high foot 20 minutes from time.

And the Town head coach gave his thoughts on the decision when it was put to him post-match.

"If I am honest, I can see why it is given in one regard, because of the high foot," he said.

"But their lad's foot is really high as well, any thought of Mal (Benning) going for a header means he is going to get hurt.

"So the fact Mal's foot is only just above their players' is frustrating.

"At times things are given and others are not. That is probably a bit of a grey area, they might hide behind the high foot, I don't know.

"It is irrelevant in one sense, but I just think back to the penalty we did not get when Charles Sagoe Jr got pushed a few weeks back.

"It is a blatant penalty in my eyes, and it gets given against us.

"I think we could have done better with the cross initially."

Town were the better side in the first 45 minutes in Shropshire, but despite Rotherham not creating an abundance of clear-cut chances, they were put under pressure after the interval.

Hurst was disappointed his side dropped deeper but said he could understand why it happened given their recent run of results.

"A little frustrated," he continued. "I think we have played better and at half-time, my view is we were the better team.

"We were 1-0 up, but I still thought we could improve further. In the second half, there were little bits.

"We knew they would react, of course, they would, when they bring Clarke-Harris on it shows the strength of their squad.

"But I just felt we were not quite brave enough to get on the ball at times. I felt we could have done that a bit better.

"We were also dropping deep. A little bit of that is human nature but you have got to be strong to try and not make that happen. That will give you a chance for second balls or the ball will just run through.

"Overall, I thought we defended our box well, and you know what you are going to come up against when you play Rotherham.

"I thought we had to defend a lot of free-kicks and corners, and for the majority did pretty well.

"What it does do is it stops that run of defeats. What we have got to try and do is back that up by getting something else on Tuesday as well.

"So it is a little bit mixed, but I cannot fault the players' efforts. Just maybe the run of results gets them to that where their confidence is not as high as you would want it to be.

"Rotherham have not done great so far, but they are a strong squad and a strong team, who are only just down from the Championship and one that is expecting to fight for promotion. We take it on move on."

Josh Feeney went off injured with 10 minutes remaining and the boss gave an update on his fitness.

He said: "He was feeling the hamstring. Fingers crossed that is tiredness, we will have to see how that is over the coming days before Tuesday night."