CAOLAN Lavery aims to get his skates on for City after breaking his scoring duck.

Lavery’s goal, which set them on the way to Saturday’s impressive 3-1 win at Swindon, was his first since March.

The Canadian ice hockey fanatic celebrated netting on his full debut by mimicking a slap shot with the corner flag.

Having come in from the cold, the Edmonton Oilers fan wants to help the Bantams ice a promotion spot this season.

“As you can imagine, the boys take the mickey out of me,” he said. “I’m a big ice hockey fan, that’s no secret in the group, so I thought that if I scored, I’d do a little hockey celebration.

“It’s been a lot of patience so far for me but you don’t have a leg to stand on. Obviously, Cooky (Andy Cook) has been playing really well and before that it was Lee (Angol) as well.

“I don’t care who you are, you always get a few butterflies making your full debut which it was for me.

“But it was more excitement than nerves. You saw the crowd that came to support us again and we want to perform for them every week.

“It’s all about being patient working day in, day out in training and waiting for the gaffer to give you a chance. Hopefully I’ve done that.

“I obviously need to play more games than little cameos here and there off the bench.

“The more minutes I get, hopefully the more positives it’s going to be for the group and myself.”

Theo Robinson also got off the mark within a minute of coming off the bench as City answered the criticism that followed the Hartlepool loss by registering their second away win of the season.

Lavery added: “As a forward, you want to score goals. You want to be playing first of all and if you’re out there, you want to be scoring.

“Theo and I want to contribute. But we understand it’s a good group of players and you’ve got to bide your time sometimes in football.

“We need to win more games than we have been recently, everyone knows that. This was hopefully a good start.

“We knew it was going to be tough against a team that were doing really well. They had three wins and three draws in their last six games.

“But everyone worked for each other on and off the other and I think we got our joy from it.

“The league is still incredibly tight. I think there are only four points from third place down to 12th.”

Levi Sutton also scored for the first time this season but it was Robinson’s spectacular second-half strike from only his second touch on the pitch that earned the plaudits.

Boss Derek Adams said: “Theo can do things out of nothing. He just had a shot and sometimes it comes off.

“It was a magnificent strike into the top corner and the goalkeeper couldn’t do anything about it. It was more instinct than anything else.

“We probably should have more wins on the table than we do but it’s extremely tight.

“You look down and it’s just a difficult league but we’re right in the mix and we just have to keep picking up wins.”

Adams is hopeful that Callum Cooke, who missed out with a bruised foot, and Liam Ridehalgh could be in contention to face leaders Forest Green next weekend.