IT HAS become Gary Bowyer’s mantra designed to keep faint hope stirring in Bantam hearts.

As this awful season reaches its final month, the City boss still maintains the fight for survival will go to the last game.

With so many still embroiled in the League One dogfight, it is hard to disagree with Bowyer’s belief of somebody’s destiny being settled by the last kick on the last day.

Whether his own team will remain in the equation by that stage, though, is very much up for debate.

The freshly-contracted manager is not daft enough to stick his neck out and say City will be in the mix for a late, late escape.

But, as it stands, the maths suggest it is not totally out the question – hence his sloganeering to keep chins off chests.

There would be nothing more dramatic than to rewrite the script on the final page.

Gunnar Halle’s cross, David Wetherall’s far-post header – THAT goal against Liverpool to snatch the most unexpected Premier League lifeline remains etched on the memory of every City fan fortunate enough to have witnessed it at Valley Parade.

It was pure cup final theatre as Paul Jewell’s battlers overturned all the odds and silenced every nay-sayer to preserve their status in the top flight.

It’s amazing to think that was 19 years ago.

At the time, Bantam watchers were well used to gut-wrenching finishes. Last-game shenanigans were almost par for the course.

Three of the previous four seasons had also gone to the wire – with players and supporters put through the ringer before snatching the most satisfying of outcomes.

In 1996, Carl Shutt, Lee Duxbury and Mark Stallard had scored the decisive goals at Hull in the Boothferry Park takeover that eased City along the path to promotion glory at Wembley.

The following year, the thundering boot of Nigel Pepper against QPR made sure they were staying up.

May 1998’s finale was the calm before the storm for the Bantams – although Portsmouth’s Valley Parade victory clinched their own survival and made for a party atmosphere as a certain Manchester City went plummeting into the third tier.

And 12 months later, City’s celebrations went into overdrive at Wolves; Peter Beagrie, Lee Mills and Robbie Blake writing their names in club folklore as the scorers who secured their first appearance in the Premier League.

City Gent editor Mike Harrison remembers some fans were so nervous going into the final 10 minutes that they chose to remain in the gents on the Molineux concourse rather than put themselves through the agonies of watching what was happening on the pitch.

So, when Wetherall nodded past Liverpool keeper Sander Westerveld in front of the Bradford End as the 2000 campaign reached its climax, the home crowd could have been excused for believing that nail-biting endings were almost part of the season ticket.

Yet nearly two decades on, none of that last-gasp elation has been repeated. City have been spared the agony or ecstasy of a whole year’s work being decided in just an hour and a half.

Relegation from the Premier League in 2001, inevitable from mid-season when the club pulled up the financial draw bridge and looked to ship out as many as they could, was confirmed with defeat at Everton in April.

Similarly, relegation three years later with the club in the throes of a second administration was confirmed with three matches to spare after a home loss to already-doomed Wimbledon.

City’s third drop into the bottom tier in 2007 followed the same miserable pattern, playing like another April shower in a 3-0 beating at Chesterfield to join the hosts in relegation misery with a game still in hand.

On the flipside, even the promotion under Phil Parkinson produced a dead duck in the final league fixture.

Seventeen points from the previous eight games had booked a play-off slot before a meaningless stalemate with Cheltenham was played out by a makeshift side as the City kept their powder dry.

Stuart McCall, then, did the same in 2017 with a 1-1 draw at Rochdale that featured only two players who would start against Millwall at Wembley three weeks later.

Post-Wetherall, a whole generation of City supporters have grown up without experiencing any of the heart-stopping episodes that litter every football season finale.

The question Bowyer is demanding of his players going into the last six games is whether they are capable of bucking the trend and providing a memorable pay-off to bury the misery of much of what has gone on before.