Kevin McDonald reckons Fulham need games like the 1-0 victory over Rotherham if they want to go the distance and get promoted this season.

The Millers made life for tough for Slavisa Jokanovic's side as they shut down the space on the New York stadium pitch while playing their own brand of long ball football.

It worked for them, until the 62nd minute when Sone Aluko prodded home the ball in front of the travelling Fulham faithful to send both the fans and the bench into raptures.

McDonald believes that although Fulham struggled to play their brand of football, playing games like this will help them on their road to promotion.

He said: "It was long overdue and we've had a couple of chances to get in there and we've done it after which, for me, was one of the toughest games of the season.

"We just edged it but they had a couple of chances but luckily enough we got the three points.

"I think the pitch wasn't ideal and it was really slow and bobbly and it was a game between two different types of teams - they want to play the long ball and they were good at it today, while we try to play football.

"That's us, we try to play football all the time and we really struggled to play it today and our pass completion rate was probably the lowest of the season today but sometimes to get promoted you need games like that where you fight for your lives and I felt we did that today.

"We went out for the warm up and there were rumours floating around that it was 1-1 and heard it was when we came back in and obviously it gives you an extra incentive but we knew we had to win regardless of their result so thank god we did.”