Gareth Ainsworth tried his best to keep Wanderers’ “rollercoaster” victory against Plymouth in perspective after seeing his side leave Home Park with a one goal lead to take back to Adams Park.

With 85 minutes on the clock the visitors were 3-0 up and seemingly cruising towards the play-off final at Wembley.

But after Zak Ansah beat stand-in stopper Alex Lynch with a “worldie” of a strike from long range, Jason Banton’s cross made its way into the bottom corner to leave Argyle firmly in the tie ahead of Thursday’s second leg.

Ainsworth said: “The boys and me would have took 1-0 this morning and that’s what it is. It’s a 1-0 victory to us and we’re a goal up going into the second leg.

“Amazing that at one stage we could have been 3-0 up, and we were. I thought we handled Plymouth well, we kept them to a minimum and we protected our rookie ‘keeper. They’ve hit a worldie goal and, fair play, they’ve got to have that.

“The second goal I think we could avoid but we’ve had a lucky goal there too, so maybe it’s not a bad result. Fifteen thousand fans here making all sorts of noise, it’s fantastic for the Plymouth boys to hear, but we had 800 die hards here.

“They never stopped singing and right at the end they were buzzing, just as I am, to take a one goal lead into the second leg. It’s all to play for and I’m really pleased with how we played.”

The Blues boss thought Lynch had done “ok” on his professional debut in place of the injured Matt Ingram, and said he was hopeful of having his No1 back for the return fixture at Adams Park.

As has been the case in the final few weeks of the season, injuries took their toll with Wanderers’ goal scorers Paul Hayes, Aaron Holloway and Steven Craig, who notched his 100th career goal, all coming off after picking up knocks.

“There’s a few things that we needed to work on, there’s a few things we could have done a bit better but losing all three strikers disrupted us,” said Ainsworth, who celebrates his 42nd birthday on Sunday.

“We’re a small squad. I can’t get any more players, we can’t afford any more players and it’s tough. We have to make do with players out of position and hopefully people are looking at that and know that we haven’t got the resources other people have got and hopefully it makes the result even better.

“We’ll go to Thursday and we’ll go again. If we get a clean sheet on Thursday we know the reward after that. I’m sure Plymouth are going to chuck everything at us as I would if we were 1-0 down.

“It’s going to be an interesting game, hopefully not as much of a rollercoaster as tonight, but I’m sure they’ll come with fight and we’ll have to stand up to that again.”

Overall, Ainsworth felt the performance was one of his team’s best all season and says a repeat showing at Adams Park will take them to Wembley.

He said: “Hayesy’s got a nasty gash – I thought that was a terrible challenge on him. There’s also Steven Craig, Aaron Holloway, Sam Saunders, JJ (Joe Jacobson) and Nico, they’re all complaining a little bit.

“We need to recover. We’ve got them in for a warm down tomorrow and we’ll be making sure that everything is fine for Thursday, fitness-wise, if they do what they did tonight that will be enough.”