COLCHESTER United head coach John McGreal felt his side's creativity was rewarded after they saw off bottom club Stevenage this afternoon.

Second-half goals from Tom Eastman, Frank Nouble and Kwame Poku sealed the U's win at the JobServe Community Stadium, after they had initially fallen behind to Jason Cowley's deflected first-half effort.

McGreal fielded an attacking line-up, with Nouble, Poku, Luke Norris and Theo Robinson all starting - and the U's boss felt they got their rewards for their endeavour after moving to within a point of the League Two play-off places.

McGreal said: “We came from behind to win and I hadn’t realised that we haven’t done that for a long time.

“It’s nice and it shows you where the belief is and where the boys are at this moment in time.

“Half-time was really measured because we knew that we’d played well in the first half.

“We had nine or ten shots at their goal and we just felt we needed to keep doing the same thing as we’d been doing.

“We’ve gone brave today – we’ve got injuries and there’s no getting around that.

"But I thought Jacko (Ryan Jackson) was magnificent in his recovery to come back and perform.

“When you have the three lads in attack who are experienced, you know you’re going to create chances for the forwards.

“That’s the thing we’ve been working on all week and we got our rewards in the second half.

"It's one defeat in 12 and 17 points from eight games.

"We had a slow start but these players were going to take a little bit of time to come together."

Colchester had trailed at the break after Cowley's shot deflected in off skipper Luke Prosser.

But they battled back well in the second half, to claim all three points.

“I couldn’t see the deflection for their goal so it was a little bit unfortunate," added McGreal.

“But we didn’t really panic – we kept moving the ball and they sat off in a deep block and we were getting around them and using a bit of width, which was excellent.

“Frank, Luke and Theo all had good opportunities in the first half to score.

"It was a lovely little dink by Theo to take all of the players out and big Tom was on the spot to put it in.

"(For the second goal) Theo and Frank linked particularly well.

"It was a lovely little slide ball and Noubs draws the goalkeeper and then slots the penalty brilliantly well.

"Young KP (Poku) has a talent - there's no question about it.

"He's shown his maturity coming into a game on the back of what he did against Leyton Orient and carrying it on."