Bristol and Hull went head to head on Saturday afternoon in one of the Tiger's biggest tests in recent seasons to finally put a run of defeats at Ashton Gate behind us. So far it's four straight losses against The Robins in their own turf.

Both sides buoyed by a 2-0 midweek victory seeing Hull sinking the Plymouth Pilgrims at home and Bristol, caging the Millwall Lions away at the Den and lot hinged on the result of this game between the two Cities with the prize being The Tigers putting an even brighter sky between us and the basement or Bristol to potentially smash their way into the promised land mini league of an end of the season play off.

It's not often a side can win by drawing 1-1 as I consider our result, but I've seen it twice now. The first was against West Ham when 2 new player, Hernandez and Diame made their debut. Expecting a drubbing, both scored and City battled with the Hammers tooth and claw to earn an incredible 2-2 draw in an incredibly exciting game. The other was Saturday.

The Black and Amber shirts were a blur for the firsts 14 minutes or so, pummeling Bristol who could only manage to contain the onslaught before they finally caved in when Pedro popped up to tuck the ball neatly away inside O'Leary's right hand post for a very welcome and deserved opening goal to put City 1 - 0 to the good.

Twice in just 4 days we've seen what could become a very nice partnership in Kamara & Pedro. Against Plymouth it was the very physical Pedro that powered on from a sublime surgical pass from Puerta who then, instead of going for glory at a covered angle, slipped it across for Kamara to dispatch with ease into the centre of the net to put the lid of our 2-0 victory.

Today, the favour was returned when Kamara drove the ball across the box from the right to a grateful Pedro who was not going to be intimidated by his markers nor by the onrushing O'Leary and duly dispatched the ball. Sadly, just a minute later Pedro's eyes appeared to be seeing through a bit of red mist and went in with both feet off the ground on George Tanner. A stupid and innocuous challenge that didn't even make contact as João pulled both his knees up to try and pull out of the tackle realising the clumsy error as he did so. No harm done, no contact made but the ref, and correctly so in my opinion had no choice but to fish the red card out of his pocket and send Pedro for an early bath.

Hopefully and given that Coyle was on the receiving end of a full contact version of Pedro's earlier challenge, the ref only yellow carded Pring on 58 minutes and this could be used as a mitigating piece of evidence to any appeal Selles makes on behalf of Pedro to try and get any match ban quashed. Referee consistency is not a shining example of hope in the Championship this season by a long chalk.

So the Tigers remaining 76 minutes gave Ruben something to think about. 10 men, a striker down, 76 minutes to go but managed to limp in at half time still 1 goal in our favour.

Given the pressure that was now turned on Hull City's goal and Manning, The Bristol boss who could smell blood and needed a vital equaliser it was no surprise that they dragged themselves back into the game on 54 minutes when Jones got into a bit of a tussle with the Robbin's number 30 and central attacker, Armstrong, who made way for Mehmeti to take the penalty awarded against our number 5, and made no fuss of sending it straight to the net side foot of the left hand post with Pandur going in the other direction.

From there on, Bristol was out for the decisive kill but Ruben and the boys had other ideas. The mentality of "If you can't win, don't lose" played very much a big part in another great show of our attitude and togetherness. From 59 minutes Ruben superbly managed his substitutions and drip fed, fresh legs onto the field right up to the final whistle. Egan and Crooks the first on to replace Kamara and Joseph together with Slater swapping with Gelhardt. 74 minutes Drameh for Coyle and then on 84, Lincoln for Puerta.

For much of the second half the possession was about 80 / 20 in Bristol's favour and if there was ever a case of a great rear guard, backs to the wall defensive performance, this is as good as we've seen City for a long time and I'm sure the City fans at the ground must have thought the final whistle would never come.

But it did, a great away point, a much improved side, attitude, application and gumption now under the Spaniard and personally I am a lot more comfortable and confident that we can leave the worry and trauma of a relegation dogfight to someone else.

Well for this week anyway.

Ok, we haven't managed to turn those 4 straight defeats at Ashton Gate into a win but given our situation and match events that saw us down to 10 men early on it's as good as.

Bring on Oxford. Let the real university City teach you a thing or two. UTT.