Burton head coach Gary Bowyer hailed a “terrific” response from his team as they came from behind to claim a 2-1 home win against Leyton Orient.

The Brewers trailed to Alex Gilbert’s long-range free-kick, but a stirring second-half comeback saw midfielders Kegs Chauke and Will Collar on the scoresheet to secure a first win in five games.

“We started the game well and it was like shooting practice for their keeper in the first half,” Bowyer said. “We concede a poor goal but our response second half was terrific with two really good goals.”

Injuries and suspension had decimated Burton’s squad and Bowyer praised the group for an upturn in form.

“We had to have a roll call, from Thursday through to today,” he added. “It was a massive effort from everybody to complete an unbeaten week for us.”

Chauke’s second goal of the season capped another solid performance for the midfielder as he dragged Albion level early in the second half.

“It’s brilliant for Kegs,” he said. “That’s his second of the season and we challenged him to start getting more goals after he scored at Leicester. I thought he was terrific today.”

Bowyer also praised young forward Caylan Vickers, who was outstanding with two assists.

“Caylan is a wonderful technician,” Bowyer said. “The bravery and courage that he has to want the ball and get forward, he just needs to increase his numbers now and he got two wonderful assists to help him on his way to that.”

O’s boss Richie Wellens pulled no punches as he lamented a “poor” performance from his side as they let three points slip away from a winning position.

“It’s poor. We were leggy,” he said. “I didn’t think we deserved to go in at half-time 1-0 up, even though they didn’t cause us many problems.”

Gilbert’s goal was a rare bright moment in the first half as he caught Burton goalkeeper Corey Addai off his line from 35 yards out with a free-kick that zipped in off a wet surface at the near post.

“We can use the excuse that we played 24 hours later than them in the week and that we have players injured, but it’s not really an excuse if we get in our positions early.

“Their two goals are counter-attacks and we can’t run back, physically,” Wellens added, bemoaning Orient’s overall fitness levels as they slipped to back-to-back league defeats for the first time this season.

“It’s very disappointing in a lot of ways of being so inconsistent in our basics,” said Wellens.

“At the moment I think that we are cheating our supporters. We are letting them down massively because everyone wants us to take that step to make top six or top eight but at the moment, we aren’t good enough to do that.”