After star scorer Andy Cook suffered a terrible knee injury on New Year’s Day, City supporters began to worry that their season would end.
Since then, Calum Kavanagh has performed excellently, although Valley Parade has seen the majority of his best performances.
However, he scored his first senior hat-trick Wednesday at the County Ground with three clinical first-half goals.
Even though the loss was heartbreaking, City, who have a striker who has now scored six goals in his previous five games, are still in second place with automatic promotion firmly in their grasp.
The play-offs and the top three might be decided by that kind of play, but Bantams manager Graham Alexander was eager to point out that it was just one of several advantages from when the game was evenly balanced at 11 men apiece.
“There’s a lot to take from our performance, certainly the first 15 minutes before the red card to Richie (Smallwood),” he told the T&A following the loss to Swindon.
“After that, you witnessed the other side of our game, but we also need to acknowledge that we had the opportunity to stop a few of the goals we gave up.
“Character and personality are the most important things to me, and I saw a lot of them from my team today.”
Alexander said that it made the loss even more difficult to accept, saying, “I’m just gutted for my players and the supporters.”
“We have an incredible record in games where we lead 2-0, therefore we didn’t win the game when we should have.
The players displayed tenacity and dedication, refusing to give up when other teams might have, even when Swindon rallied to tie the score at three.
We scored again after going up the other end, and you could see how hard these players worked and how supportive they were of one another, which can be frightening at times.
“Unfortunately, we just couldn’t see it through until the end.”
Following Smallwood’s early departure, all ten of City’s men on the pitch gave it their all, which at least suggests that the players will have a difficult last four.
“I’m always proud of these players,” Alexander stated.
Because of their dedication and attitude, they are a pleasure to work with every day that I am with them.
“There wasn’t a team out there that felt sorry for itself.”
And that’s the issue right now because City can’t afford to mope about this devastating loss because they have a vital match against promotion rivals Notts County on Thursday night to start the Easter weekend.
“I’m over this game already,” Alexander declared at full time.
“Now that it’s over, we can look forward to Thursday.”
“We will take the things we need to, analytically, from this game, but I’m just excited for the next challenge.
“Going into the Notts County game with the same level of confidence we had going into this one is now the most important thing.”
“If we are able to play as we did in the first fifteen minutes here, we have a good chance of winning three points.”
