Gillingham players rose to the occasion in front of a big Bradford crowd after a pre-match message from boss Peter Taylor.

And the manager felt Gills deserved their injury-time equaliser in a 1-1 draw on Saturday.

Taylor - given a warm reception back at his old club - knows how tough Valley Parade can be for visiting teams when the home crowd are behind their side.

But Gills did a good job of keeping more than 12,000 City supporters quiet and they were well and truly silenced when Antonio German levelled in the third minute of injury time.

Taylor said: "I told them 'if you can't come to a ground like this and enjoy it, you might as well pack it in' because it's a good atmosphere, another 12,000 people watching, it's a good place to play and to me they took all that on board and enjoyed it.

"They certainly enjoyed the end of it and I'm sure they enjoyed the first 45 minutes."

Gillingham defended well and played neat football in a goalless first half.

Kortney Hause's slip led to an own goal by Leon Legge as City went in front but Antonio German secured a draw in the third minute of injury time.

Taylor said: "I thought we kept going. I don't think we played as well second half as we did in the first half. I was very, very pleased with the first-half performance.

"Not so good second half. We kept making mistakes and we certainly made mistakes leading up to their goal but I still feel as though we passed the ball quite well.

"In the end we had to change the shape a little bit on the strength of being a goal down but I thought the boys kept going.

"They worked extremely hard and for their effort they deserved that equaliser.

"First half I felt we were very safe on the ball and played in the right areas but we just started looking a bit anxious at the start of the second half.

"I'm sure that's Phil (Parkinson, boss) saying to Bradford 'get after them, they're playing football,' so maybe we should have taken that into account a little bit more."