Head coach Danny Cowley hailed the spirit of his Colchester side after they struck a dramatic stoppage-time equaliser to draw 1-1 with Bradford at the JobServe Community Stadium.
Jamie McDonnell headed in Arthur Read’s corner at the far post in the ninth minute of time added on for his first professional goal to secure a share of the spoils.
It had looked like Bradford would claim all three points following Andy Cook’s low powerful shot past goalkeeper Matt Macey on the half hour after Bobby Pointon’s effort fell into his path.
Cowley said: “We showed togetherness, fight and a never-say-die attitude.
“That’s not just the players, that was the supporters too, because they stayed with us.
“They could have easily got frustrated – I certainly was – but they didn’t, they chose to give positive energy and we repaid them in the end.
“Bradford are a huge club with big expectation and I think we should take a lot of credit because we totally dominated that game.
“They score and from that moment onwards they’re just time wasting and taking time out of the game and really slowed it down.
“We weren’t able to get the ball on the pitch but we got our just rewards in the end.
“Macca was fully deserving of that goal but I’ll be honest, we went in afterwards and we weren’t celebrating – we were just disappointed we didn’t win.
“I thought we did enough to win the game.”
Colchester had twice gone close through Harry Anderson and Read in the first half prior to Cook’s opener.
But Richie Smallwood almost doubled Bradford’s lead before half-time and Bantams boss Graham Alexander was frustrated his side could not hold on for victory.
He said: “The players are bitterly disappointed.
“The things we talked about this week in training and how we approach away games we did much better at that and got ourselves in a really good position to win the game but unfortunately we didn’t.
“I can’t say anything negative about the players – they have given absolutely everything.
“I feel frustrated we didn’t take three points from a game where at that stage of the game we should have and could have.
“Unfortunately, they’ve scored a set piece in the 99th minute.
“There’s a little bit of carnage in the box, the goalkeeper’s up there and everything’s just piled in there.
“There’s maybe something we can learn from there; I think maybe we could have not given the set piece away and certainly defended it better but I understand it when their structure goes out of the window and it’s hard for them to keep to our structure.”
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