Kenny Jackett admitted to feeling disappointed as his Leyton Orient side were denied a place among the League Two play-off places as Rochdale scored at the death to snatch a 2-2 draw.

Orient had fallen behind inside 30 seconds after Alex Newby headed home from close range, but Aaron Drinan slotted home an equaliser after 24 minutes following a neat through pass from Dan Kemp.

And the visitors took the lead after 66 minutes when Craig Clay smashed the ball home from the edge of the area but Rochdale snatched a point in the 90th minute when Liam Kelly’s corner was flicked to the back post for Newby to apply his second close-range finish.

“We’re really disappointed,” said Jackett.

“The corner at the end where they’ve got a lot of bodies in the area, they got the first and the second contact – we needed to be there to hook the second ball out and it’s those moments that have cost us.

“We’ve made mistakes in the first minute and the last minute – in between I thought we played well.

“I did think we were the better side, but you have to concentrate for 90 minutes. It’s unlike us because we’ve been very strong at the back defending set-pieces and defending as a block and as a team.

“The first minute and the last minute today has let us down, the bit in between we played very well.

“It was a test of character after the terrible start. But there was a long time to go and I still felt confident and felt we had a lot of things right, a lot of things the players can base future performances on and bring confidence.

“Obviously, we need to eradicate those mistakes.

“Rochdale have some attacking ability but I felt if we could have got our final pass right and that execution of the right pull-back, the right finish at the right time, then we’d have scored more.”

Rochdale boss Robbie Stockdale was relieved to snatch a point but was disappointed with his team’s display.

“It was maybe a fortunate point,” he said.

“After going into the lead so early you are hoping to build a bit of momentum but I thought first half we were OK, nothing special, and I felt we were poor in the second half.

“We’ve got miles better quality than what we showed. Credit to the players, they kept at it but it wasn’t pretty to watch, that’s for sure.

“The players will accept they weren’t great with the ball, but taking the positive out of it, we’ve shown better quality than that and lost games. It was scrappy all the way through.”