Michael Collins tastes victory in his first match in charge of Bradford

Posted Sunday, August 05, 2018 by PA

Michael Collins was delighted to get his reign as Bradford head coach off to a winning start courtesy of a 1-0 victory at Shrewsbury.

On-loan Huddersfield midfielder Jack Payne netted the winner in the 19th minute, breaking into the box and sweeping home a low shot after good approach play from George Miller.

Shrewsbury hit the crossbar twice in the second half through Josh Laurent and substitute Alex Gilliead.

Collins said: “I think to be honest the most important thing is that day one’s out of the way now. Obviously, there’s a lot of euphoria around every club before the start of the season.

“Every club up and down the country has got one eye on promotion, that’s a natural thing, that’s just the way the Football League works, but the main thing that we did today was we focused on character and the application to the game.

“This is always a difficult place to come to, especially when they’re still riding the wave of last season where they made the play-offs, so it will be difficult for teams to come here this season.

“I’m delighted with the character of the lads today that we asked them to step forward as men and make sure they left here with three points and they’ve done exactly that.”

Payne’s decisive goal crowned a bright start from Bradford at the Montgomery Waters Meadow.

Collins stressed: “That’s one thing that I’ve said from day one is that we will always give everything that we’ve got and take games to the opposition.

“I think that’s how you reflect this football club, I think that’s how you reflect the fan base.”

It was a historic day for Shrewsbury as they became the first club in the English Football League or Premier League to introduce a safe standing area.

But they were unable to pick up any reward in John Askey’s first League One game in charge after replacing Paul Hurst.

Askey said: “We have created chances and that was the plus point, chances we should have taken. Obviously, we hit the bar a couple of times.

“On the other side of it, the goal that we gave away, we’ve given that to them, so that was obviously disappointing, but I thought it was a game that we could have won today.”

Askey included six new signings in his starting XI and winger Shaun Whalley, one of last season’s star men, was heavily involved as Shrewsbury chased an equaliser.

Askey, who led Macclesfield into the Football League last season, said: “I thought every time Shaun picked it up first half he looked a danger and we could have made more of one or two chances.

“We started to open them up a little bit, but you’ve got to be ruthless and when you do score obviously the game changes completely.

“We didn’t do that so it gave them something to hang on to and it made us change the way that we were playing.”