When Lady Luck was handing out her lucky dust, she definitely missed us out by giving us a tie against a team who were in-form and wouldn’t lack professionalism. With the likes of Blyth Spartans and other non-league sides winning the day before, Bradford boss Phil Parkinson wasn’t going to let the Bantams be casualties of the FA Cup.

For the first eight minutes there seemed to be nothing in the game. In fact, we had majority of possession in Bradford’s half. Then, in the 10th minute, they had their first chance. When I touched the ball onto the post and it rolled along the goal line, I thought ‘this is going to be our day’. Then reality kicked in pretty quickly as we failed to clear the ball and found ourselves 1-0 down.

From then on, you could see Bradford grow in confidence. Their players were now wanting to get on the ball, they could smell blood and were starting to apply the pressure. The noticeable thing for me, as we were trying to gather our thoughts after the goal, was that you could still hear our supporters trying to drive us on, which was amazing.

With the amount of pressure Bradford were starting to apply, we were trying to stay strong and in the game by blocking shots like our lives depended on it. No-one epitomised this more than the two in front of me, Kingy and Elliot.

The possession that we did start to have was mainly going through Sweeney but they weren’t letting up. They continued to hunt and close us down and make it difficult to get out of our half. But all I could hear was our supporters still out-singing the Bradford supporters.

What finally confirmed luck definitely wasn’t on our side was when Jon Stead managed to get his outstretched leg to the ball and it found its way into the bottom corner.

Half-time gave us some respite. Even at 2-0 down, we felt that if we could score the next goal, we’d be back in the game.

Bradford, though, did what good teams do. They closed the game out and didn’t give us a sniff.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they scored their third via a painful deflection when the ball seemed to be coming right into my hands. It was probably obvious to everyone that this knocked the stuffing out of us and that was no more apparent than when they scored their fourth straight after their third.

I looked down at the ground and all I can remember is our fans still singing, driving us on, as well as probably trying to stay warm! After seeing and hearing that, all I was thinking was ‘please let us give them something to really sing about’.

We started to put some passes together and worked the ball down Bradford’s left. Rory received the ball and played it across their box into Lee Noble, who couldn’t dig the ball from under his feet and just back-heeled it towards their goal. It’s rolling... Could this be something for the fans to celebrate... Yes! We’ve scored, what a goal!

Then, as I turned round and walked back towards to my goal, I looked at the Bradford fans and saw something that I’ve never witnessed before. They were cheering our goal!

Now we were trying to push for another. An unbelievable shot from Lee Noble forced their keeper into a fantastic save and our fans turned the volume up even more.

As the game drew to a close, I was left with a sense of disappointment – that we let the fans down and didn’t give Bradford more of a game. But after reflecting, I have to give Bradford respect and congratulate them on their professionalism. They ran out deserved winners and I wish them all the best in the next round.

With all that said, there’s one thing that Bradford can’t take away from us – it was our day.
Win, lose or draw, it was always going to be Dartford’s day.

That’s something we as players, a club and supporters should be proud of.