Colchester United head coach John McGreal praised his "unbelievable" players after they beat Leyton Orient in bizarre circumstances this afternoon.

The U's are now just a point off the League Two play-off places after winning 3-1 at Brisbane Road, in a game that was halted for two hours after a pitch invasion forced referee Carl Boyeson to take the players off with six minutes of the contest remaining.

The match resumed with Colchester seeing out their victory to claim a valuable three points and their first away win of 2017, to boost their chances of claiming a play-off spot ahead of their final game of the campaign at home to Yeovil Town, next Saturday.

McGreal said: "The boys have put in an unbelievable show to come back from 1-1, knowing we needed the win.

"I know they didn't really have anything to play for but we still had to win a game of football.

"I'm pleased that the boys have done that and I'm really proud of them.

"Weeks ago, we always wanted to get down to that final game and a little bit of a shoot out with other teams and we've done that.

"We've kept things exciting and I'd like to commend the fans as well, because they made unbelievable noise."

McGreal said both sides wanted the game to be finished, after it had been suspended because of a pitch invasion involving several hundred Leyton Orient fans unhappy with the ownership of Francesco Becchetti.

Tarique Fosu had given Colchester the lead in the first half and although Sandro Semedo's stunning strike levelled things up, two goals in the space of three minutes from skipper Chris Porter and substitute Macauley Bonne put the visitors in charge, before the game was temporarily halted.

"The referee, the two sets of players and the Football League were desperate to get the game done," said McGreal.

"We'd done enough to win the game until the 85th minute I think plus the stoppages and it was all about getting it done.

"You have to play it by the rules and we'd set aside four days at the end of the season for if a game is abandoned, so that's in place.

"But when it goes to this amount of time, you don't really want to be coming back five minutes plus stoppage time.

"It's an added expense and Omer (Riza) and his team and staff were brilliant - they wanted to get the game done as well.

"We all want to play football and we all want to do what's right and I think that we've done that tonight, by getting the game finished."

After restarting the game, Colchester did not touch the ball after that as Orient played out the final few minutes by keeping possession in their own half, as the game was completed.

McGreal said: "(Orient boss) Omer (Riza) and I came together and said we would start the game as we finished it - the players took control of what went on.

"You're putting the players at risk, because looking at the two sets of players in the warm up they were really stiff.

"We've got things to play for and ten injuries as it is and you could see they didn't want to get injuries, so it petered out.

"Would those final few minutes happened like that earlier on? I think so, as we were looking to see the game out to get three points and that's what we've done."

Colchester were robbed of the services of wing-back Brennan Dickenson for the Leyton Orient game, after he suffered a cruciate injury in training last week.

The former Gillingham player is facing a long spell on the sidelines, much to McGreal's disappointment.

"Brennan has done his cruciate and is now out for nine months," added McGreal, who is hopeful that Cameron James will be available for their game with Yeovil next weekend after he missed the Orient win with a hamstring problem.

"He's been a huge player for us and it's a sad miss for him and his career - he'd been doing well of late."