Boss Kieran McKenna felt tonight’s hard-fought from-behind 2-1 victory over Port Vale was sweeter than the more comfortable home wins which have become commonplace at Portman Road in recent weeks.
Nathan Broadhead netted twice after the break, the second from the penalty spot, as the Blues, who thrashed Charlton 6-0 on Saturday, came from a goal down at half-time to claim a vital three points to stay on the tail of leaders Plymouth and ahead of Sheffield Wednesday, both of whom also won 2-1 this evening.
"It was a really big win for us, no doubt about it,” McKenna said. "A really enjoyable way to win a game, to be honest, because we’ve had a different dynamic in lots of our home games lately - we’ve scored early and gone on to score a lot of goals and been comfortable.
"We always knew and still know that between now and the end of the season there are going to be some situations of adversity that we’re going to have to come through and tonight was a big one.
"And when you win a game like that, sometimes it feels even sweeter than a big landslide victory like Saturday.”
Asked what he was expecting from Port Vale, who sacked manager Darrell Clarke on Monday and have his assistant Andy Crosby in interim charge, McKenna reflected: "It was hard to know because I think they’re statistically in the top three highest pressing teams in the league, so they’re usually a really aggressive, man-to-man pressing team.
"So with the new manager that was part of the challenge. We didn’t know which way it would go. It could either have been really aggressive man-to-man but it ended up as as deep a block as you’re going to see anywhere.
"That’s a really big challenge for any team in world football and certainly a big challenge for a League One team which is still developing.
"It was tough to overcome. We could have scored early, we could have scored in the first 25 seconds. We started the game pretty well but when you don’t get the goal and they’re getting deeper and deeper and different things are going on, it becomes a big challenge.
"And that’s amplified greatly when they score a great goal on the stroke of half-time and that put us in a really difficult situation.
"Coming out of that situation showing the spirit and belief and fitness and adherence to our principles as we did and to get the win in that way can be a really big win for us in the season.”
Asked what his messages to his players were at half-time, he said: "There were two bits really. Tactically, we had to improve and adjust a few things. We needed to be more aggressive with a couple of our positions to get more bodies against the last line and more threat on the last line.
"We adjusted a few things tactically, but the more important bit was probably the mental bit. We spoke about knowing that at some stage we were going to have a situation like that, it’s not all going to be comfortable wins, and if we want to be successful at the end of the season we’re going to have to come through a couple of situations like that.
"So it was about belief, composure, not getting too caught up in the emotion of the game, while still trying to build the pressure and build the emotion in the stadium but being composed in ourselves.
"Handling the emotion of the 45 minutes to come was probably the biggest challenge and I thought we did that really well.”
McKenna had praise for Broadhead’s calmness as he netted the penalty which claimed the points while Port Vale sought to distract the Wales international, play mind games and delay its taking for as long as they could.
"I don’t think there are many who handle pressure better than Nathan. He’s so composed, so he stuck it away really well,” McKenna said.
"It was a night of long delays, wasn’t it? Let’s be honest. It was one of many long delays and they were trying to put him off taking the penalty but you have to rise above that and it was great for him that he managed to do that.”