John Still expresses delight at his resilient back-four after Bradford triumph

Manager John Still lavished praise on his defence for standing firm in the face of a late Bradford onslaught to help seal a third win of the season.

Daggers dominance in possession for long periods in the match, kept the 9,000-plus home crowd quiet for much of the afternoon.

However, a scuffle involving virtually every player on the pitch, leading to two bookings apiece with 12 minutes remaining, saw the home supporters riled.

Their vociferous support inspired Bradford to their most effective passage of the game all afternoon, but Daggers held on for the narrow win to delight the boss.

“One of the things you’ve got to do when you come to Bradford is silence the crowd a bit,” said Still. “We did that until a little skirmish got the crowd up. We didn’t really want that, I thought that was a bit unprofessional, we’ve got to walk away from that because it gets the crowd going which we didn’t want.

“But having said that, we dealt with it, I thought the two centre-halves were very good, both full-backs were never really in trouble, so the back four handled it very well.

“They’re a big side and all the big lads came up at the end, the goalkeeper can kick the ball from one end of the pitch to the other, which put it right in there, so we had to defend well, but it’s only late in the game that Chris has had to make a save.

“So I think all in all it was a really strong, disciplined, hard-working performance and I thought we had one or two very good performers today.”

For more reaction to Dagenham’s win at Bradford pick up your copy of the Barking & Dagenham Post, out Wednesday.