Sam Crispin, Fan Blogger, Tuesday 13th April

Sometimes you go to a football match and, when it's over, come away feeling robbed of three points, where you come so close to getting a win that your draw feels like a defeat.

There are other games where you feel pleased that your team managed to get what they did, the "I'd have taken that before the game", mentality. So sure were you before the game that you'd be on the end of a good ol' fashioned thrashing that anything you can take from it is a bonus.

Then there are games where you just feel so proud of the players and the club that it's almost pointless putting a label of 'good result'/'bad result' on them. Last night, for me, was one such game.

Football, as we're forever being told, is a "results business". Certainly for chairmen and the money men that run football clubs, that is very much the case, and that two word phrase has subsequently been used as the justification of more managerial sackings than you could shake a stick at. To them, results and success are everything.

For fans, I think it's a little different. It may not seem like it sometimes, but it is. The result is not the be all and end all of it for us. If it was, we'd all surely just stay at home and watch the final scores roll in on the telly.

What we want - all we ever want - is a club and a team to be proud of. What gives us that pride differs from person to person - some feel it when their team is scoring bags of goals; others only get it when their side is playing scintillating, attacking football and sit at the top of the league; for some, it will come 2 minutes from full time in a game against your local rivals, where, out of nowhere, you find yourselves two or three goals ahead. (Greetings to all readers from Torquay...)

For me, pride comes through games like last night's. We only scored one goal, we had fewer chances to score than the other team and we only came away with a point…but I can barely recall a game this season where I've felt prouder to be a City fan.

Every single one of our players ran their hearts out last night. They were all, without exception, prepared to stretch every fibre and sinew of their beings for the cause, 100% willing to throw themselves in the way of everything that was coming at them.

It'd be unfair, not to mention near-impossible, to pick one Man of the Match from our boys last night.

Paul Jones in goal was in phenomenal form, catching and parrying everything Swindon could hammer towards him.

Matt Taylor, super Matty Taylor, was imperious, and turned in one of his best ever games in a City shirt. He played like an absolute giant - tackling, blocking, winning everything in the air - and the fact that the final touch on their late equaliser was his doesn't matter, as without him for the 94 minutes prior to that we could easily have found ourselves 3 or 4 goals down.

George Friend and Richard Duffy were as steady and reliable as ever, Steve Tully was scampering up and down the wing like a Jack Russell, Liam Sercombe and James Dunne were brilliant yet again with their resolute defending and incisive attacking, and Ryan Harley was spraying passes around and blocking off opposition attacks all night long.

Scott Golbourne was twisting and turning his way through the Swindon ranks like a champion ballroom dancer, Barry Corr was winning everything in the air and linking up with every one of his team mates, and Ryan Taylor, in his first start for the club, played with such commitment and drive that it was as if he was Exeter City born and raised.

It was a pleasure to be there, it really was. A wonderful experience, made all the more enjoyable by the atmosphere created by our wonderful away fans. Not a hint of negativity among them, just 95 minutes of pure noise, passion and support. It was a joy and a privilege, as it always is, to be stood amongst them at a game. If there is a better set of away fans in the country then I've yet to see them.

If we stay up (and it is still an 'if'...), it will be because of occasions like last night, where every person, be they player or fan, has gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that we take something back to Devon. A nice comfortable win at The Park is lovely, but going to the home of one of the best teams in the league and earning a point that you didn't expect to get is very special indeed.

So well done to the lads on the pitch, well done Mr Tisdale, and well done to every fan who made the trip to Wiltshire. You did us proud, and that's all we ever ask.

The opinions expressed in our Fan Blogs are exclusively those of the author and not those of Exeter City Football Club.

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