ALDERSHOT 1 CITY 1

THERE have been more significant City goals against Aldershot than Saturday’s FA Cup lifeline.

Think back seven years to Easter Monday 2011 when David Syers threw himself at a corner to nod a last-gasp winner at Valley Parade.

Without that, the Bantams would still have been staring at the abyss of tumbling out of the Football League. Stakes don’t get any higher.

A first-round equaliser on a paddy field of a pitch against opponents from two levels below hardly ranks on the same terms.

But it was a hint, a suggestion that something might finally be turning; a slither of light to glimpse through the unending tunnel of 2018.

A City fightback of late has seemed about as likely as Donald Trump going a day without lambasting a White House reporter.

Let’s face it, discarding the Checkatrade Trophy penalty “win” over Everton’s kids and that’s not hard to do, you have to go back to April for the last time the Bantams came from behind to get anything.

So earning a second bite against non-league opposition – and a place at least in tomorrow night’s draw for round two – is not to be sniffed at. And that’s without mentioning playing conditions that Noah would have turned up his nose at as being too soggy.

Maybe it was the Julian Rhodes factor, as some fans cheekily suggested.

The former chairman was once more in situ in the directors’ box, trying to keep his standard low profile.

His casual attire had caused a stir among the suited ranks of the Aldershot boardroom but that was a rare misjudgement on a good first week back at his beloved club.

It was only last Sunday that Rhodes answered Edin Rahic’s SOS plea to help bale them out of the present mire. But you can already sense the shifting sands.

Hopkin has welcomed Rhodes with open arms; a genuine football man in the City corridors of power to help with the salvage operation while his divisive successor takes a much-needed backward step.

Saturday was perhaps the first evidence that a more structured less chaotic regime off the pitch will go a long way to producing much-needed results on it.

In isolation, a draw with a team 37 places down the football ladder is nothing to shout about.

But throw in the customary early goal against, the wild weather and a playing surface that had home boss Gary Waddock joking about ducks and swans, then this was a significant outcome.

It’s not true to suggest this was backs to the wall given how the visitors bossed most things after the first 20 minutes. But sleeves were rolled up, chests puffed out and chins raised to ensure City avoided national embarrassment as first-round fall guys.

The pre-match storms of Biblical proportions had added to the sense of forboding given their current losing league form. The end of the world had never felt closer.

The footballing apocalypse seemed to accelerate when Aldershot splashed their way into an early advantage.

Matt McClure had already dragged a very presentable chance wide when Josh Barrett’s corner fell obligingly into the path of centre half George Fowler to fire home – via a Ryan McGowan deflection – for his first goal in 47 Aldershot appearances.

Thirteen minutes in and it was already sink or swim – quite literally in the case of Connor Wood, who could probably have done with a pair of flippers defending the soggiest section of the pitch at the bottom of the slope.

City, the team who had forgotten what a comeback looked like, were staring down the barrel once more.

As the rain once more upped its intensity, Hopkin’s men showed the character and commitment that has been questioned so frequently over these troubling months.

The fighting spirit to conquer the elements as much as their opponents was evident in Wood charging forward at every opportunity to provide willing width on the left.

Lewis O’Brien, once more, came to the fore seemingly as unaffected by the cloying floor as he has been by the negativity whirling about the club since being first thrown in two months ago.

The conditions were alien to a touch player like Jack Payne but he, too, grafted through to ally his vision on the ball with a readiness to get stuck in.

City wrested the early supremacy back from their hosts and set about a determined recovery mission.

The chances mounted up but typically a goal continued to elude them.

The frustration with Eoin Doyle goes on after he wasted the best of them before the break, blasting straight at keeper Will Mannion after Hope Akpan’s blocked shot landed at his feet.

The Aldershot keeper remained busy as he twice denied Wood before the interval.

Hopkin used the break to challenge the fighting spirit of his team. Tactics, as such, went out the window in an environment that was fast becoming farcical.

Had the game been scoreless, surely referee Paul Marsden would have called it quits by that point. But Aldershot’s early goal had backed him into a corner.

The match assessor may be in his ear for allowing things to proceed as the weather caved in even more.

But City, to their credit, did not moan and hassle the referee into an abandonment. Instead they splished and splashed their way forward in search of a reprieve.

FA Cup survival was down to how much they wanted it.

Payne sent George Miller clear but as the flag stayed down, the young striker rolled a tentative effort wide.

Then Doyle lost his bearings connecting on another peach of a pass from Payne and his header spiralled over the bar.

Mannion made a mess of Wood’s angled drive – only to claw it out from the line. Then he acrobatically tipped over from O’Brien.

But the resulting corner brought the well-deserved breakthrough. Payne’s delivery was precise, Nathaniel Knight-Percival’s header emphatic.

The relief among the black shirts, not to mention the 175 travelling souls barely visible through the gloom in the stand behind the far goal, was palpable.

There are no guarantees with a rematch at Valley Parade a week tomorrow. But at least City have some hope to cling to – and it’s been a fair while since we’ve had that.