Sunday afternoon away days are largely few and far between, and although they are not quite as rare as hen’s teeth nevertheless our trip to Bristol meant a third day on our travels in 10 days.

However they will have travelled back to Lancashire more than delighted with the three points our professional performance secured at Ashton Gate, which has been a happy hunting ground on many past occasions for our fans.

Our hard-earned win meant that we have only lost 3 times on our last 14 visits here since our relegation to League One in 2012-13 with 6 of those games now ending in wins for our team.

I personally thought that the win was our best league away one all season.

Andrew Hughes was my PNE man of the match

placeholder image — Andrew Hughes was my PNE man of the match

Before the game I was hoping that we could take at least a point from this fixture but with City only being a point and two places below us the magnificent 2-0 win was the kind of statement result you could only have dreamed of.

It was oh so different to our last visit here where masses of Bristol City fans entered the playing area at the final whistle to celebrate their teams qualification for the end of season promotion play offs. This time many of the same people would have been part of what seemed to be a well organised fire drill when large numbers of the home crowd headed towards the exit doors after Alfie Devine's superlative strike 20 minutes from time had doubled our advantage.

It had been "football in a library " at Ashton Gate when Lewis Dobbin's cool finish inside the opening ten minutes had quietened the home crowd and given our fans the opportunity to sing the repetitive chant which seems to have been belted out by every visiting team to Deepdale this season.

I thought that "football in Alaska" might have been a more appropriate "choo choo" chant as I was positively freezing but was being kept warm inside by an encouraging first half performance in which we competently kept the home side at bay for the remainder of the half.

Not everyone shared this view and at half time I noticed a bearded chap on the row across from me who was sporting a pair of cut off denim shorts as part of his attire.!!!!

For a lot of the match we fought a rearguard action and though you could have given the man of the match award to most of our players in an all round fine team performance I thought the three central defenders Andrew Hughes,Jordan Storey and Odel Offiah did particularly well with Hughes just shading it for me.

I was also impressed by Jamal Lewis who covered the threat on the left hand side of the pitch and on this showing I hope he can earn a contract beyond the end of the season.

The result meant that we have come out of the heavily congested festive period virtually unscathed with little sign of The Grinch this time round apart from a brief hovver in the dark clouds at Wrexham. We are in fourth position in the table somewhere I would never of dreamed up after our last visit here in May and had I suggested it they would have sent for the men in white coats and straight jackets to take me away.Lets hope this is just the start of a vintage year so "2006,bring it on ",