Humes plotting great escape

Colchester boss Tony Humes senses the great escape is on after a 3-2 victory over Fleetwood kept alive their survival aspirations.

The U's were 2-1 down with six minutes remaining but Gavin Massey took advantage of a goalkeeping howler to level before Chris Porter bagged the winner from the penalty spot. The visitors had drawn first blood after the restart, with Jacob Murphy skipping past Nathan Pond and crossing from the left channel for George Moncur to scoop the ball home. But Jamie Proctor and David Ball left Colchester staring at relegation before their late double raised their hopes. And, with a game in hand against Swindon on Tuesday, Humes is hopeful the U's could yet dodge the drop. He said: "That shows what a tight-knit group we are as a club. We're still fighting for our lives. We are still together and the players don't give up. "It was tough out there and we didn't give in and we got the win which I thought we deserved. "It's a pressure situation and it's all about how you deal with it. If you haven't been through it before you've got no fallback to know how to cope with it. "But our players will be better off for it in the long run. We've just got to keep going. We've got a belief we can get out of it and if we win our two games we will. That's it." Fleetwood boss Graham Alexander believes the defeat exposed weaknesses in his side, who fell away from the play-off chase at the back end of their campaign. He said: "We've lost the game because of poor decisions by the referee and by us. It's not down to lack of effort. "I'll never be negative on that side because our players give everything we've got. We've got our deficiencies, every team has, and sometimes we get caught out by those. "But we have to look back at this season as a huge positive. We know there's places we need to improve and we're not going to shy away from that." Alexander was also left to question key decisions from referee Darren Bond. "The first half we didn't pass the ball well enough and kept turning the ball over," the ex-Preston defender added. "At half-time we spoke to the boys about what we needed to do but the goal straight after half-time put us on the back foot. "It was a poor goal to concede from our perspective but we made the substitutions, played more aggressively and scored two good goals. We should have gone on to win the game, we've had a blatant penalty denied for a handball in the box. "Then for the third there's a blatant foul right in front of the referee, there's a breakaway and we give a poor penalty away."