By Daniel Taylor

It was a lovely warm night in Wigan, perfect for a cracking away win (yes I used Wigan & lovely in the same sentence) & having endured horrendous tragic on the journey up it was nice to finally be in the ground.

The game kicked off to a rousing rendition of ‘Keep Right On’ & my beloved Blues looked bright in the early stages. A chorus of “Wigan’s a s**thole – I wanna go home” bought a bit of life from the home fans (who the hell needs a drum for atmosphere by the way?).

Wigan threatened a few times but in all fairness looked toothless – their tactics seeming to be ‘hit it towards Grigg & hope’. Having said that our tactics of ‘hit it towards Donaldson & hope’ weren’t proving any better. Ryan Shotton was mopping up everything thrown at him, which allowed us to break & almost score, Donaldson agonisingly hitting the post.

Then came the glorious moment we’d all been waiting for – Donaldson raced clear into the box & was brought down by Bogdan – penalty!

But – with no Caddis on the pitch who was going to take it? We all watched as Donaldson picked up the ball & placed it on the spot. Could this be the big man’s first goal of the season?

Simply put – no. The penalty was reminiscent of Zigic’s feeble attempt against Braga & was easily saved by Bogdan, thankfully though one of our players read it & reacted before anyone else, David Davis striding onto the ball & placing it confidently past the despairing Bogdan. The away end erupted as we could see a potential smash & grab away win coming.

Half time came & Wigan were booed off the pitch, music to the ears of everyone associated with BCFC & the away fans retired to the concourse, pleased with the scoreline without being overjoyed with the performance.

The second half though was a much different affair. Wigan had obviously been given the ‘hairdryer’ & they came at blues with more purpose. Wigan remained the better team for virtually the entire second half, seemingly playing to the rhythm of the (now really annoying) drum – we tried to hit them on the counter as often as we could, almost scoring through Cotterill who bounced a good-looking shot off the crossbar.

Wigan continued  to press & finally (after screaming for a change for a good 15 minutes) there was movement on the bench.

Che Adams came on & his impact was immediate, the crowd lifted, eager to see their new man in action. He showed a couple of really nice touches straight away, the best being a perfectly weighted through ball for Maghoma to run onto.

He made such an impact that all of our players started giving him the ball, even when he wasn’t in the right position to receive it! Wigan continued to press & looked to have far the better attacking threat, although if Will Grigg really is on fire we need to call Ryan Shotton the fire blanket as he gave him nothing & was my MOTM by a distance.

More movement off the bench resulted in Greg  Stewart also getting his debut, coming on with Viv Solomon-Otabor to bolster our counter-attacking tactics.

Despite being on the back foot, all seemed to be going well & we looked to be heading for 3 points until a momentary lapse of concentration left Grigg unmarked on the edge of the box. He promptly ran into said box & squared a ball across for Craig Davies to score a 90th minute tap in that even Cardiff wouldn’t have missed.

Cue the last few frantic minutes of Blues hanging on grimly to a point after all 3 should have been pocketed well before the final whistle.

When all was said & done the fact we remained unbeaten this season in the league was a positive, as was getting on the coach to come back & seeing Sky’s coverage of them over the road cocking it up even worse than we did.

Small mercies indeed, but as we all know – take them when you can because it is a long long road.