ON Wednesday evening, Albion Sports finally had some luck on their side, beating local rivals Eccleshill 4-2 on penalties after fighting back to a 5-5 draw in normal time.

The West Riding County Cup First Round tie at The Citadel Stadium was a thriller and it took some guts and determination from the hosts to claw their way back into the fixture.

Eccleshill stormed into a 5-3 half-time lead, and at that point the game looked dead and buried, but back came Albion, and last gasp goals from Finn Donovan (83) and Spencer Gordon (88) rescued the hosts a draw and a spot in the next round.

A victory like this has been a long time coming for the Bradford side and even sweeter that it was against their dearest rivals, Eccleshill.

The latter have been storming through the division and find themselves in second place in the league standings.

And therefore, it looked almost certain that they would walkover a depleted Albion side, who had lost their previous five league fixtures and have plummeted to seventeenth.

Manager, Ishy Hussain, hopes his side’s victory spells the end of this baron run.

He said: "We have been on the receiving end of some really unlucky defeats in recent weeks and at half-time in this game, we were 5-3 down and it felt like we were going to be on the end of another unfortunate defeat.

"But we stayed true to ourselves, played the way we wanted to play and we showed great heart in the second half to come back into the game, and then penalties is a 50/50 coin toss.

"Thankfully, we got the job done and we are through to the next round of the cup.

"I definitely believe we deserved it. We conceded five, but we seemed to be the side wanting it more and we were more aggressive.

"We know that in any derby game, form does go out of the window and it was the case in this one."

Hussain added: "We hope that this is the turning point in our form and that we can start to change our fortunes.

"We must move on from our recent run and take forward the positives from a bad situation, one of those being tonight in progressing through to the next round of the cup.

"But one thing is certain, if we continue to perform like we did tonight then I'm sure we will be fine going forward."

Albion return to action on Saturday (today) when they travel to Knaresborough Town (3:00 PM). The Bradford side have a chance to move above their opposition with a victory, but Hussain admits he knows little about them.

He said: "It will be a good chance for us to climb the table with a win, but we are going into this fixture with a bit of uncertainty. We must concentrate on our game."