Wimbledon 1 Crystal Palace 1

Clinton Morrison rescued a late point for Crystal Palace on Saturday but only a succession of missed chances denied tenants Wimbledon a win over their landlords.

Morrison's 21st goal of the season came after good work by substitute Tommy Black with just 10 minutes to go, to hand the Eagles a somewhat fortunate play-off lifeline.

Dons' David Connolly had earlier had three second-half chances to seal the points but he skewed a right-foot shot well wide when clean through after 71 minutes, then found Palace keeper Matt Clarke with a free-header, before watching him make an outstanding save late on.

Wimbledon's biggest crowd of the season (13,564) saw the Dons go in front when Damien Francis headed in Neil Ardley's corner after just seven minutes.

It was against the run of play as Trevor Francis' 4-3-3 formation had posed problems for the Dons defence, with Morrison hitting the side netting when he should have squared to Ade Akinbiyi early on.

The £2.4m mis-hit man actually had the ball in the net after just three minutes, only to be flagged for off-side.

In fact Akinbiyi looked lively in the first half until Dougie Freedman handed him a good chance after 36 minutes.

Played in by Morrison, Freedman was one-on-one with the keeper but elected to drift a neat cross square for Akinbiyi, only to watch in horror as he mis-timed his header and missed the ball.

Palace battled hard against their local rivals and during the first half it threatened to turn ugly as both Jamie Smith and Curtis Fleming launched into bad-tackles on Connolly and Michael Hughes.

Fleming was lucky to escape punishment after twice knobbling Hughes with two-footed challenges which saw the Irishman go off injured in the 39th minute.

After an hour, with Palace making little headway in open play, Francis made a crucial tactical switch, replacing Akinbiyi and Simon Rodger with Tommy Black and Julian Gray. This proved crucial as Black went on to create Morrison's equaliser.

Afterwards Francis said: "We had started very boldly with three up front and I decided to go even bolder with four up there. The pendulum swung our way and we got the goal back. I thought the equaliser was merited."