TWICE in recent times we have faced a date with destiny in the area of Staffordshire known as the Potteries.

The first occasion was at Stoke City in April 2007 when we were daring to dream about the Championship play-offs, having humbled champions Sunderland the previous week. We ran out of gas that day, and Tony Pulis’s Stoke overpowered us after a brave rearguard fight.

Fast forward to Good Friday last week, and we found ourselves four miles down the road at Port Vale, hovering above the relegation trap door, knowing that a bad defeat would make us racing certainties to be relegated.

It was a high pressure game, but the good characters that Tony Humes has spent the last seven months sorting and assembling rose to the occasion and in a sparkling second half scored the two goals to win the game, creating enough chances to have really embarrassed our struggling hosts.

It would have counted for little if we couldn’t compound the win by beating Barnsley on Monday. We did this in some style with the thrilling wingplay of Massey and Murphy turning on the power after the break to create three superbly constructed goals.

Alex Gilbey had looked subdued at Port Vale but immediately he was introduced as substitute he looked like the player we all know he should be, with his mind just on football, controlling his area of the pitch, as much a contributor to the win as the goalscorers who got all the headlines.

Bongani Khumalo has been masterful over the two Easter games. He will not have realised it, but his comment that he is grateful for the opportunity Colchester United are giving him provided the perfect justification for some of the painful pruning and weeding that Tony Humes has had to do for the good of the club.

Bongani’s humility is the unanswerable reply to players who believed they were doing us a favour just by pulling on the shirt. Talk about separating the men from the boys! Bongani, the irrepressible Jacob Murphy, the astonishingly calm and mature Tom Lapslie, and new loanee Richard Brindley have all experienced more success than failure for the U’s and suddenly we look like a side which knows how to win, even at home where winning has been so hard to achieve.

Of these four players, three have been signed by Tony Humes, and one has been nurtured by Tony and Richard Hall in the Academy for the last few years.

Some fans have been reluctant to give Tony their unconditional backing in the last few months, reserving judgement until we know how this season pans out, but even the most obstinate must soon realise that the tide is turning.

We are still in a perilous position with a succession of battles to be won. There has been no intention to start games slowly, a classic ‘second half side’, but it has worked in our favour in the last two games.

There’s no bad way to win! By the time the opposition realise what we have in the armoury, it has been too late.

There will be a huge turn out of U’s fans at Coventry tomorrow, urging the boys on round the final corner and into the finishing straight.