Battling Rotherham United pay late penalty as bid to secure back-to-back away wins thwarted by Birmingham City

Kieran Sadlier's 86th-minute penalty put them on course for three points at Birmingham after a battling display, following hot on the heels of their opening day win at Wycombe.

This is Rotherham, though, so it sounded too good to be true and unfortunately it was as Blues got a late penalty of their own, converted by Jeremie Bela, to earn a 1-1 draw.

With wins in the second tier so hard to come by for the Millers, going in front so late in the game and not holding on is an obvious disappointment.

But there were enough promising signs from Paul Warne's side for this this result to be seen as a positive.

“At 90 minutes for us to throw away two points is hugely disappointing but if you had offered me a point after 75, I would probably have taken it because they were in the ascendancy,” Warne said.

“On the whole I was really proud.“We didn’t come here to defend. We came here to try to win and we just didn’t do enough.

“We had a couple of deflected shots which I thought might loop in past their keeper but I obviously didn’t rub the right genie this morning!

“I thought Birmingham defended really well. Hopefully sooner or later we can give someone a good crack (beating).”

Both sides had chances, with Rotherham's Michael Smith fluffing his lines from a corner and Lukas Jutikiewicz hitting the crossbar for Birmingham.

But it looked like the Millers were going to be leaving with the points Bela tripped Ben Wiles and Sadlier fired home the resulting spot-kick in style.

However, three minutes later Billy Jones, playing instead of the injured Joe Mattock, clumsily fouled Jon Toral and Bela converted.

Jones made up for his mistake, though, as he produced a fine block in added time to ensure his side did at least take a point.

Warne had no issues with either spot-kick: “They are both penalties. It was disappointing but the one we got, it seemed more of a penalty whereas the one we gave away was a little bit more disappointing because he (Jon Toral) wasn’t really going anywhere.”