OVER 1,400 Colchester fans had a riot of fun in Cambridge.

All but a few were well-behaved, representing the club well and getting behind the team.

There were one or two arrests, which is sad, but generally we were there to have a good time and the team ensured we did.

Fan of the day was Tommy Leggett, who set off at 3.30am and ran the 45 miles from Colchester to Cambridge to raise funds for the medical treatment of his son, Alfie, who suffers from Norrie’s Disease.

Tommy’s heroics were mirrored by a good performance by the team in the closing stages of the game.

On a powerful surge, we scored a deserved equaliser through Sammie Szmodics shortly after Macauley Bonne had seen a strike disallowed for offside.

Had the game gone on for another ten minutes, I'm pretty sure we would have won, as the pendulum had swung so firmly in our favour.

For the last period of the game, we had a broad attacking base and Cambridge were tottering, a bit like David Haye on his one good leg.

I felt sorry for Chris Porter, who was again the fall guy up front, too much on his own.

He toiled thanklessly for 80 minutes against Scott Wharton and Leon Legge, giving Cambridge few problems and making us predictable and easy to read.

On the rare occasions Porter won the first ball, we generally lost the second. Change had to come.

It was just a question of the manager’s timing of the change. We resisted the temptation to be braver, sooner. When the change came it signalled a late assault on the Cambridge goal.

With Rekeil Pyke and Macauley Bonne entering the fray for Fosu and Porter, with Sammie replacing Sean Murray, we were suddenly a different side for the simple reason that the Cambridge defence was facing more questions than they could answer.

They were laterally pulled all over the shop and we also had the threat of attacking the space behind the central defenders, thanks to added pace.

Additionally, Cambridge had major problems at right-back, where everyone in the crowd could see that firstly Taylor and then his replacement, Davies, were struggling.

It was always an area where Brennan Dickenson was likely to exploit and so it proved.

He provided the crosses both times that the ball ended in the Cambridge net, the firstly invalid but the second legitimate.

Sammie’s goal was just marvellous. Not that it was superb in its creation or its execution, but just that it was so typical and fitting that it was Sammie who put in the extra hard yards to be the person who was attacking the ball in.

Sammie (along with Macauley) is one of the worst people to be missing games, always desperate to be out there playing.

Hopefully, that goal helped to make up for four months of frustration.

George Elokobi thought he had scored when he made close-range contact with his left foot, only to be denied by a superb save to his left by keeper Norris.

You could tell from George’s body language that he was sure that he had levelled the scores when he struck the ball cleanly - he took a moment to recover as in his head I think he was celebrating with the assembled hordes behind the goal.

George’s love of playing the game is so obvious. He would have celebrated just as wildly as youngsters Macauley Bonne and Sammie Szmodics actually did.

Hopefully we will play an adventurous line-up tomorrow against Portsmouth. We owe Pompey a beating as when we went down to Fratton Park in September we showed them too much respect, with two midfield sitters. We learned that day that we have nothing to fear from footballing sides.

We will need to control Pompey midfield puller-of-strings Gary Roberts, who will be floating all around the attacking areas of the pitch looking for openings, causing us problems with his wand of a left foot.

If success in football were simple to achieve, we would be able to start with Bonne, Pyke and Szmodics and carry on where we left off against Cambridge.

How we would all love to see that. It’s easy to be cavalier from the safety of the stands!