Steve Morison expressed his pride at Cardiff City's valiant performance against Fulham after the manager endured his "toughest 24 hours" in the job.
The Bluebirds camp was struck by a sickness bug hours before taking on table-topping Fulham, decimating Morison's squad and forcing him to alter his starting lineup up to 90 minutes before kick-off.
It makes Cardiff's performance against Marco Silva's side all the more impressive, because they could quite conceivably have drawn or, on another day, even won that match.
But after Aleksandar Mitrovic's first-half goal proved the difference, Morison praised his troops for standing up to the task.
"I couldn't be prouder of the lads. They were fantastic," Morison began.
"We've gone toe to toe with them in our own way, limited them to the third-least amount of shots they've had this season. We've had more shots on goal than them, better chances than them.
"But they scored one and we didn't. If we keep performing like that we can have a really good end of the season.
"I'm really pleased with the performance considering that's the toughest 24 hours I've had as a manager."
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Ryan Wintle, Jordan Hugill, Uche Ikpeazu, Alfie Doughty, Mark Harris and Rubin Colwill were all struck by an illness within 24 hours of the game, some of them even in the hours leading up to kick-off.
It forced Morison to change tack as many as four times, which is hardly ideal preparation when taking on the league leaders.
"It's been an absolute nightmare," he added. "It started yesterday after training, a couple of the lads went down.
"I named the squad. Then I woke up this morning, I went to the gym at 8am and I had two players ruled out, Mark Harris and Uche (Ikpeazu).
"I called James Collins up to go on to the bench. Then at about quarter to 11 I was coming in at Rubin (Colwill) calls to say he doesn't feel great but that he wants to give it a go.
"When we turned up to the game, Ryan Wintle and Jordan Hugill were both ill. Hugill does the warm-up, comes in and says, 'I can't give you anything'.
"I'd already made the decision for Collo to start, so we were a sub down. The team changed about three or four times.
"All of that going on, for them to go on and perform like that shows how good we are as a group and how together we are."
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