Luke Tisdale shared his delight after the ten-men under-23s came from behind to cruise to a 3-1 victory over Peterborough United.
After conceding early on, the Sky Blues then were reduced to ten-men as Josh Pask was shown red.
Despite being a man down, City battled hard to complete the turnaround win, with goals courtesy of Jodi Jones, Josh Eccles, and a Peterborough own goal.
Reflecting back, after the final whistle, under-23s boss Luke Tisdale raved of his side’s performance and praise them for their determination to see through the win.
“I’m over the moon, really proud of the players, I thought their effort was incredible, they dug really deep, being 1-0 down and then going down to ten men made the game so hard and the weather conditions were brutal.
“Today is all about the players, they need to enjoy that because they’ve run all day, blocked everything, attacked when we were underloaded, creating chances with two versus five at times, I’m really proud of the players and they should be proud of themselves.
“It’s a theme that runs through the football club at the minute, you see the first team go down to ten against Bristol City and they found a way to win, the 18s are grinding out results and the 23s are doing the same.
“Most of the games we’ve played this year, we’ve scored late goals, but it was nice to have the game secured with 10-15 minutes to go, in terms of their attitude, we see that everyday, it was important to put the Hull City result to bed and move on from that and hopefully they feel like they’ve rectified that today.”
The Sky Blues played in tough weather conditions, so Tisdale revealed his thoughts game plan which saw City come away with the three points.
“We spoke about it the break and said it’s important to stay in the game, but when you get a chance, shoot, because it’s wet and windy and you’ll get deflections, but if you don’t shoot we’re not going to score.
“I’m very impressed, even with ten, our playing out was still great in the second half, sometimes we were two versus four in midfield, its difficult to pick out individuals from that performance because everybody stood up to the fight and battled through everything today.”
On a more personal note, Tisdale praised the likes of Jones and Eccles, as well as welcoming back Aidan Finnegan, who retuned to the side after a lengthy injury lay-off.
“Jodi was brilliant and you need that sometimes, that bit of quality that young players are maybe striving for.
“I think its Jodi’s first goal at the Higgs since he’s been at the football club, so we were having a joke on whether he was going to break the curse and Josh Eccles’ finish was outstanding as well.
“That little bit of quality helped us get over the line, but everyone else has done their job to the max.
“He [Finnegan] should be proud of himself, he’s been out for 12 months, there’s been times where we thought he was back and then he’s regressed slightly, but he’s kept going everyday, we can build his minutes back up now.
“His mental strength sums up the group’s mental strength today, it’s a theme that runs throughout the club.”