JAMES O'Connor has vowed that Burnley will come out fighting after a controversial late penalty cost them all three points at Stoke City.

The midfielder was desperately disappointed that Kyle Lafferty's first goal for three months wasn't enough to make them the first team to topple his former club at the Britannia Stadium since November.

But O'Connor insists the stop-page time equaliser will serve to make Burnley even more determined to achieve their play-off ambitions in the remaining nine games, starting with the visit of Charlton Athletic tomorrow.

"Something like that is hard to accept, for a few hours afterwards it really gets to you," said the Dubliner.

"My Saturday would take a while before I could actually sit down and enjoy it.

"But you pick yourself up and steel yourself to look to get stuck in on Tuesday. We'll re-group and look to put things right.

"It's a massive game for us. I'm sure Charlton will be hoping to be up there, so we need to push on.

"We have confidence anyway, we just need to look to that game now, take the positives from Saturday and work as hard and defend as resolutely as we did at Stoke and take that into the game."

But O'Connor admitted that conceding so late to Stoke, and the circumstances which led to the Potters' equaliser, was hard to take.

"Cruel's not strong enough to be honest," said the former West Bromwich Albion midfielder, who couldn't believe the Clarets' misfortune when Liam Lawrence's spot kick rebounded off the post but hit Gabor Kiraly's head and went over the line.

"You just couldn't write it could you?

"But some people have seen the replay and said it's not a penalty.

"I know referees have a hard job but I just felt, if you went back and checked the free kicks, I'd say 90 per cent of them went against us. That's not to say that's the way it was, but that's what it felt like, and obviously it's very disappointing.

"The conditions were obviously hard because it was a gale force wind and we knew in the second half that we had the wind against us. It was just a case, really, of battening down the hatches and we felt as if we did, and what happened at the end is very disappointing.

"We knew it was going to be a tough place to come, Stoke are doing very well and I think before the game if someone said 'would you take the point?' we'd have probably said 'yes'.

"But the way things turned out it leaves such a bitter taste in your mouth.

"We defended stoutly and resolutely and that's why it's so hard because it's right at the end where they've got through and put themselves in a position to get the penalty."

But O'Connor was determined to focus on the positives as the Clarets aim to take another chance to close the gap on the play-offs with tomorrow's visit of fifth-placed Charlton.

"Our goal was pleasing. It was a great start for us to go one up, and we had a couple of chances after that, which possibly might have killed it for us.

"But it wasn't to be. You have to take these things on the chin and rise up to it, so on Tuesday we can get stuck in," said the 28-year-old.

"We'll re-group and look to put things right."