'My missus is sick to death of it': Bristol City's Rob Atkinson on forever cherishing THAT iconic Portsmouth moment

Rob Atkinson has revealed his partner is ‘sick to death’ of him re-watching his ‘truly, truly special’ Pompey goal.

But the former Blues defender is adamant he will never tire of the iconic moment - and intends to savour it through YouTube for the rest of his life.

Atkinson has now returned to Bristol City, where his future will become clearer once the Robins - who currently don’t have a manager - return for pre-season training.

The 26-year-old made a huge impact at Fratton Park during a four-month loan - with arguably his greatest contribution being a last-gasp goal against Derby.

Facing a 2-1 home defeat to their relegation rivals, who would have leapfrogged above the Blues, Atkinson headed home Nicolas Schmid’s long kick to level a minute into time added-on.

‘Truly, truly special’

It represented a pivotal moment in Pompey’s survival battle - and for the architect himself.

He told The News: ‘Scoring was something I wanted to do playing for Pompey. I wanted to score at Fratton Park and I did it twice, which was truly, truly special.

‘There are things which you miss when you’ve been absent from football for so long. I just completely forgot what that feeling of scoring a goal was like. To re-live that - and also in such a big, important game - was truly special and something I’m going to replay a thousand times in my life.

‘I have already watched it a load of times - my missus gets sick to death of me watching it over and over again!

‘I scored a brace for Bristol City against Preston (October 2022), with the second goal a 90th-minute winner, which was quite special as well, but the magnitude of the Derby game was far greater.

‘Both are really special moments and I will play them both a thousand times on YouTube throughout my life and tell my grand kids.’

Of the four goals in that April 2-2 draw, Atkinson registered three of them.

Having cancelled out Jerry Yates’ opener within a minute, the central defender unfortunately then diverted Kayden Jackson’s left-wing cross past his own keeper.

And it appeared as though the 2-1 scoreline would be enough for the Rams - until late drama.

‘It was quite a unique header’

Atkinson added: ‘It was a long punt forward and, because there were so many of us from Pompey up as well, it was quite easy to get a read of it without any physical contact from any opposition player.

‘So I had plenty of time to read the flight, I was coming in at a really nice angle as well and I could think about what I wanted to do with the header.

‘I knew it was quite an awkward position to score from, I needed to deceive the goalkeeper if I wanted to score because I wasn’t going to get it in from pure brute power. So I knew I had to help it on.

‘The keeper would probably have thought I’d have gone for the other corner, because that's the way my momentum was going, so it was quite a unique header, you don’t see many of them.

‘I had to sort of twist my neck and help it on its way as opposed to altering the direction too much.’

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