Andy Crosby hailed Port Vale’s match-winner Brad Walker after his goal finally saw off a stubborn Oldham side in a hard-fought 3-2 win.

After Jamie Proctor’s two goals were cancelled out by first Christopher Missilou and then Davis Keillor-Dunn, the winner came 10 minutes into the second half when Walker drilled a low shot into the bottom corner from 25 yards.

And the Valiants’ relieved assistant manager was quick to praise the midfielder who, following orders to get higher up the field, made his presence felt.

“We’ve spoken to Brad in the last few weeks about him being higher when we’re attacking so he can regain second balls from the edge,” said Crosby, still overseeing team affairs as manager Darrell Clarke makes a phased return from compassionate leave.

“We wanted him to take the opportunities to score from distance, which he’s got the ability to do, and it was great to see that fly in.

“It seemed like a really long time waiting for the final whistle, we were hanging on and we had to show a different quality, defending balls in our box, using our game management and trying to see the game out.

“I’m sure Oldham will go away from here today frustrated that they’ve taken nothing but if you want to be successful come the end of the season you can’t always play fluent, attacking football, you have to find a different way to win.

“I thought we were superb in the first half, we just didn’t defend two balls into our box in two different circumstances, one from open play and one from a set play.

“The lads showed amazing qualities in the second half to see the job through and now it’s another win on the board.”

While Port Vale remain in the automatic promotion places, the defeat left Oldham outside the relegation zone on goal difference alone.

But manager John Sheridan was full of admiration for his players, who he felt deserved some reward.

“I take a lot of pride out of our performance,” he said. “We were playing against a good team who are going really well and I thought the lads put a real shift in and we were very unfortunate not to take anything from the game.

“Sometimes I can take a defeat when we’ve performed like we have today, we’ve come back from going a goal down and then going 2-1 down and we’ve shown that we’ve got a bit of character in us and in the second half I thought we were the better team.

“The performance was good, we’ve got to take that into the next five games. We were a lot better than when we won at Stevenage last week but we haven’t got anything from the game, so that’s a big downer for us.

“We had magnificent support from the fans who came down here today and I think they appreciate that we were trying to get something from the game.

“We won’t worry about what’s going on around us, we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves and take the performance into next week’s game.”