Happy Hatters as they thwart U’s ‘last throw of the dice’

With the U’s trailing the Hatters by 15 points many will have seen the clash at the Abbey as being Cambridge’s last chance to force their way back into the championship race.

But Mark Cullen’s stunning last-minute volley scuppered United’s revival.

Boss John Still said: “I said before the game that we are going to play a side tonight that may look at this, I’m not saying we will, as their last throw of the dice. I’m not saying it’s correct, but that’s how I felt.

“And I said they’re going to die to win this game. And we’ve got to match it, and you know, I think there were three shots all game, I thought we defended terrific - I don’t think our attacking play was great, but I didn’t think either side’s attacking play was great because I thought it was that sort of game.

“But we just had to work, dig in, and as we know with out team, it’s never over, we made some changes and got a goal right at the end.

“We’re at the business end of the season coming up and it’s about results.

“We know we can play great, we know we can attack, we know we can not concede, we know we can score and today I think we showed we are never beat, so it’s another string to our bow.”

Reliable defender Scott Griffiths was disappointed by the ‘sloppy’ goal the Hatters let in on the night, but was delighted by the way they fought back.

He said: “I think they are obviously a decent team or they wouldn’t be where they are. The pressure was on them I feel being behind (in the league).

“I’m not saying it wasn’t on us, but you could tell that they needed the extra push to try and get in front of us and we dealt with it.

“We seemed to make a little bit more of hard work of it than we should have done in the second half by the goal, I want to say poorly conceded, but I need to have another look at it on the tape.

“But we battled hard, never say die attitude, and got back and I would say it’s probably a fair point.”

Goalscorer Mark Cullen hailed the way the Hatters responded to the rarity of going behind, with the Hatters not having trailed since their 4-3 win at Tamworth on October 19.

He said: “It’s never great (being behind), but you can’t go into every game and win it 3-0 or 4-0, sometimes it’s going to be a grind and we’ve gone a goal behind, but fair play to everyone who played, they grafted and we’ve got the result in the end.”

Cullen had a long conversation with Gray on the sidelines as he replaced him, as he revealed: “He was just telling me to go and do my thing.

“We work in training together quite a lot and he’s a brilliant lad and he’s been flying at the minute and it was nice of him.”

But once Town levelled they looked the most likely to go on and snatch a hugely unlikely win in a game that the U’s had dominated.

Still admitted: “Other than Benno (Benson) once, we didn’t run it into the corner, we tried to win it and I think that’s how we play.

“We’d have liked to have won it, but I think it was a fair result and a good result for us.”

Griffiths was determined they wouldn’t concede again after the goal and concurred Town were more likely to snatch it.

“Never too high, never too low!” he joked. “I needed to try and stay composed as well as the rest of the team to try and make sure that we didn’t concede a sloppy goal again.

“It almost looked like we could have attacked on the break and scored another one at one point, but we didn’t so we’ll gave to take it.”