GARY Bowyer felt a point on opening day gives City something to build on – despite failing to get past Cambridge’s 10 men.

The visitors survived the last half hour after Liam O’Neil was sent off to claim a goalless draw at Valley Parade.

It was a frustrating start to League Two for the Bantams, who hit the bar in the first half with a spectacular effort from James Vaughan, but Bowyer was relatively pleased with what he saw.

The City boss said: “I knew it’s going to be a tough league and that was the case today.

“Both teams looked very nervous in the opening 10 minutes which is to be expected at the start of the season. But after that I thought we dominated possession.

“Our switches of play and getting into the final third were terrific. What we’ve worked on came out.

“I could be talking about one of the goals of the season if Mr Vaughan’s overhead kick had just dropped. That was an unbelievable bit of skill.”

Bowyer felt referee Ollie Yates was right to show midfielder O’Neil a straight red for his foul on Clayton Donaldson. But he did concede that the City striker had fouled Dan Jones immediately prior to the incident on the halfway line.

Bowyer added: “It was a foul their way leading into it but the number of times you don’t see a referee do that because it’s an actual intent to go and boot somebody.

“It should be a sending off and the referee did well with that but it was a foul to them before that.

“There were lots of positives, the fact we kept a clean sheet and didn’t get beaten when they went down to 10 men because we’ve seen that many a time.

“Individual performances were very good but the frustrating bit was obviously breaking them down.

“We had 22 attempts at goal and not enough on target. We didn’t work the goalkeeper enough.

“We’ll be better for that game because just towards the end we looked a little bit lacking in match sharpness.

“Obviously with the game getting called off last week probably didn’t help us. At the time we didn’t think that.

“But it was a good foundation for us to build on and perform better than that.”