COLCHESTER United head coach John McGreal admits his players letting off steam at half-time paved the way for their win over Crawley Town.

Second-half goals from Frank Nouble and Luke Norris sealed the U's victory at JobServe Community Stadium, after they had been pegged back at half-time by a controversial penalty awarded by referee Trevor Kettle.

Crawley's Filipe Morais scored from the spot to cancel out Sammie Szmodics' opener, with Colchester adamant that Luke Gambin had dived in the box following Luke Prosser's challenge.

However, the hosts recovered from the setback well to claim victory and move up to sixth in the League Two table.

McGreal said: "We feel a little bit irate at the moment with these refereeing decisions going against us.

"It looks as though it was a bit of a dive for their penalty but we'll have to look at it again.

"We had a heated chat at half-time to say you can't blame the referee - the only way we can get this win is by all of us together, as a group and try not to get involved with the referee.

"We knew we had to do it on our own and I thought the two goals we scored in the second half were a good celebration of how much it meant, because we felt hard done by after the first-half penalty.

"Whether you're in the Premier League or division two, you want the right decisions but it gave us a good foothold at half-time because we knew we had to go out and win a game of football and I thought the boys were terrific in the second half.

"We were in complete control in the first half and scored a good first goal - (Luke) Norris has picked (Sammie) Szmodics out particularly well.

“I thought we could have had a couple more and we had good opportunities and we feel hard done by at the minute by refereeing decisions.

“When we came in at half-time, the boys were adamant that it wasn’t a penalty.

“We’ve had a look at the tape and the boy does dive a bit but we came in at half-time and despite all of the hard work, we’re back level.

“The boys were disappointed with the penalty decision that went against us and one or two choice words were said at half-time.

“But it was up to us and we scored a terrific second goal.

“Although Crawley caused us one or two problems, we dug in and Luke finished brilliantly for us at the end.”