"We enjoyed it today," said Neil Warnock.
"I've been on at them all week about how difficult it will be because of the way they play. The lads competed other than the goal and we played some good stuff at times. We passed it well.
"The equalising goal came and the lads on the bench said let's make sure we don't give it away, I said let's go and win it.
"You only have to look at the stats, we dominated the game really. We had one or two really good performances.
"I was ever so pleased with the substitutes, all of them, and we needed that.
"Cardiff had a couple of yellow cards so we wanted to put them under pressure. I thought Kebano was really sharp, you don't want to come up against him in the last 10 minutes.
Mick McCarthy
“I can’t sit here and say that we deserved to win the game. But I can say that we should have done, once we got ourselves into that position.
“Their goal shouldn’t end up in our net, but it does, which is disappointing, but I’ll take the point. Once they got momentum, we’ve had to fight it out, and the lads were great.
"You know the quality that we have, with Harry and Josh - Kieffer Moore, who’s been getting his goals, Sheyi and Leandro, Jonny Williams on the bench. That’s kind of a recipe for winning games, if you’ve got that. But having to come to Middlesbrough and play like we’ve had to play today, it was a war of attrition.
“It wasn’t the best game of football I’ve ever seen, maybe one of the worst. But we’ve come away with a point, and that’s what’s going to be important at the end of it.
“The players have earnt it because they’ve worked really hard. We’ve showed that we’ve got a good team spirit and a good work ethic, and then of course we’ve gone on a six-game winning streak, which is wonderful.
“We’ve consolidated that with a really hard-earned point here. Having played on Wednesday night away from home, I would have taken it.”
On fellow manager Neil Warnock Mick joked: "Neil was just complaining because that's what he does. We're both the same. If we're not complaining you may as well nail the lid down because we'll have croaked it."