Pushing bus out of the snow strengthened our resolve – Duke

BRADFORD CITY are Wembley bound and it’s snow joke.

Just ask heroic Bantams goalkeeper Matt Duke, who revealed that it was not a blinding block, last-ditch tackle or even James Hanson’s Villa Park stunner that convinced him the club were onto something special in the Midlands on Tuesday.

In the event, it was something else entirely that made him believe it would be all white on the night.

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Namely, the sight of him and his Bantams team-mates pushing the team coach after it got stuck in snow at a pick-up point on the M1 near Chesterfield on Monday afternoon.

The team were en route to the FA’s new St George’s Park complex just outside Burton where they trained due to their Apperley Bridge training ground being covered in snow.

It is hard to imagine Premier League footballers rolling up their sleeves and doing the same.

Admittedly, it may not have had a direct impact on what happened on the pitch at Villa, but that moment perhaps said everything about the esprit de corps that has served City’s band of footballing brothers so magnificently well on their Capital One Cup adventure.

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Duke said: “When the coach got stuck at the Treble Bob pub where we met and we were all off the bus pushing it and, having a snowball fight, you did get a good feeling.

“It is little daft things like that which make you think: ‘This could be special.’

With City’s weekend League Two clash at Port Vale falling victim to the big freeze last Friday afternoon, City players had three-and-a-half days to dwell on their second-leg semi-final date with destiny at Villa – a sizeable and perhaps unhelpfully long build-up ahead of what represented for many the game of their lives.

But the weather and travel disruption unwittingly did the Bantams a favour, according to Duke.

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He added: “Monday came and we had all the disruption with the snow and all we were basically thinking was: ‘What are we going to do?’ and ‘Where are we going to train?’

“I think it helped and it was not until Monday night when we had the meeting that we talked about the game and that is when it sunk in that it was here. We then trained at St George’s Park, which was unbelievable and it made it a bit special staying there the night before the big game.”

Chances for lower-division players to dine out on giant-slaying Cup exploits are pretty rare these days – and for one club to enjoy four outstanding results against top-flight clubs in one season is almost unheard of.

Elder statesmen such as Sheffield-born Duke, who produced heroic displays in the famous Valley Parade nights against Villa and Arsenal and in the shoot-out victory against Wigan Athletic at the DW Stadium, have hogged plenty of the limelight in the process.

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But he insists City’s young brigade, including teenagers Carl McHugh and Curtis Good, who belied their tender years in their showings against Villa, and top-scorer Nahki Wells, deserve equal credit for their displays in white-hot arenas where many a youngster could have crumbled.

He added: “We had experienced the atmosphere at Villa in the previous games at Bradford and there wasn’t that much difference in terms of noise.

“The young lads like Carl and Curtis, who are young 19-year-olds, learned from that. The more experience you get, the better you handle it.”

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