Tom Pope's excellent equaliser yesterday evening was his 109th in a Port Vale shirt, breaking Martin Foyle's post-war record for the club, and the forward admits it's hard to put into the words how he felt after he scored at the Etihad.
After going a goal down due to a deflected City goal, it was a euphoric five minutes for everybody involved with club when Pope headed home the equaliser, and the Vale forward struggled to find the words to describe the feeling.
The Vale number 9 stresses that the reason the goal was so special is because it was the equaliser as oppose to a consolation goal late on, and it gave everybody associated with Vale a bit of hope, even if it was for five minutes.
Pope admitted that before the game he was praying for a chance at goal, and when it did come, he once again proved that giving him a yard of space would not go unpunished.
“You can’t put into words really, I think with it being the equaliser, I think if we were 5-0 down, I would have picked the ball up and walked back across the line.
“It gave us hope for about five minutes, a massive high and then you’re kicked in the teeth again. It was just a great moment, a great feeling, I can’t put it into words how it feels when you’ve got nearly 50,000 here and 8,000 away fans.
“It was a special moment, but they’ve done what they do best and turned the screw a bit and it was tough.
“I was just praying I got a chance, and if I got a chance just try and take it and I said before the game that you want to try and give your fans something to cheer and shout about, the last thing you want do is get beat by five or six and not create anything."
There were 8,000 travelling Valiants at the Etihad yesterday evening, and Pope says they’re a credit to the club as much as anybody else, and they get behind the side wherever they go.
A chorus of ‘Feed the Pope and he will score’ rung around the stadium following Pope’s equaliser, and the 34-year-old was delighted that he could give the fans something to cheer about.
The travelling Vale fans received a lot of plaudits for the noise generated at the Etihad, and Pope has branded the Vale faithful the best fans out there.
“They are every week, I’m not going sit here and tell you because 8,000 have turned up that they’re a credit to the club, they’re a credit every week whether it’s Leyton Orient, Stevenage, Carlisle, no matter where you go they go in numbers and they always get behind the team.
“Away from home our fans are the best out there I don’t care what anybody says, to see 8,000 of them when normally you get 700 or 800 and you feel like that’s special but today it just drives you forward, you want to do something for them, I think it gets an extra 10 percent out of you.
“They’re a credit to the club just as much as the players, the staff and everybody else, we’re all part of this together and we can all be proud of what we’ve done."