Preston North End Fans’ Panel’s John Smith hails fairytale ending

The magical transformation in the dynamics at our club since his appointment has made me feel like the pantomime character Cinderella, after she had been gifted some glass slippers in order to attend the royal ball at the King’s castle.

Before the game I was even dreaming that we could reach the play-offs and have our own fairytale end to the season. Since our goalless September meeting The Robins had only kept two clean sheets in their last 22 league games so when they took an early first-half lead I was still optimistic of a comeback.

However, as time went on this feeling went and I thought we were lucky not to have been two or even three goals behind at the interval.

At half-time I was hoping that the tried and trusted cliche of football being a game of two halves would apply to this one, and after a double substitution it looked like being the case when we came out all guns blazing and soon equalised when Emil Riis slotted in a rebound after the keeper could only parry a well struck shot from impressive loanee Cameron Archer.

Roared on by the 12th man of a vociferous crowd I thought we could go on to win the game but then Bristol retook the lead with their first shot of the second half 10 minutes from time.

This left me feeling like Cinderella when she had lost the glass slipper and was back at home living in forsaken circumstances.

However, as in all fairy stories, there was a happy ending to this tale when Riis played the role of Prince Charming to save the day by blasting in an equaliser in the game’s dying seconds.

He is now just eight goals short of becoming our first striker to score 20 league goals in a season at this level since Steve Elliott in 1979/80.