Bradford City Manager Graham Alexander heads to Colchester

The free header from the corner – nine minutes after Jamie McDonnell's later equalizer time slot – was particularly difficult.

Four months later, Bantamus will lock Colchester and horn this weekend.

However, Graham Alexander has argued that the previous pain from November has nothing to do with the rematch.

“To be recognized in the 99th minute is going to stab a bit because we felt really good to be away from home,” he said.

“But it's football. We can look back on it, but we 'equalize' it by getting the final winner against Salford.

“That's how the seasons work. You can identify the game in one aspect and identify the game in another.

“At the end of last season, when we missed one point in the playoffs, we had the same feeling. We ended up looking at three or four games and thinking, 'They were one.'

“But if you have around 50 games in a season, you need to score as many points as possible during that period.

“It's not nice to look back at that point. I don't think it has anything to do with Saturday's game.

“The challenge for us is to continue doing what we already do.”

Colchester won five straight wins to slip into playoff locations. And like cities, they don't lose often.

The Bantams' successive defeats raised them to nine for the season. There were only 2 visitors on Saturday. The lowest in League 2 is Portvale, who is in sixth place.

Alexander added: “Colchester has drawn a lot of games, so it's where we're trying to improve the balance of results and maintain that difficult mentality.

“We've done it for quite some time, almost a calendar year, and we need to keep it.

“At this stage of the season, everyone deserves to be in a league place. After 36-37 games, all the clubs had luck, bad luck and more.

“We are the place we deserve to live in and at this point we are the second best team in this division up to the region.

“We have to maintain that belief in what we have already tried to do this season.”