A depleted Kidderminster Harriers side went down at Lincoln City tonight to a single goal from on loan Shane Bradley. This defeat knocks their play-off hopes slightly but with a game in hand they are still not too far behind the leading pack and if we can get a positive result at Macclesfield this Saturday we should then be right back in contention.
Of the four other promotion hopefuls in action tonight only Torquay came away with three points at Shrewsbury. Bury and Oxford shared the points and Bournemouth lost at Cambridge.
The Harriers manager,
Ian Britton, made some changes to the starting eleven when he bought back Lee Ayres in place of the injured Wes Morgan, opting to leave Scott Stamps on the bench. Drewe Broughton and Bo Henriksen were also relegated back to the bench as Brit went with a lightweight forward line with Andy Bishop and Ian Foster spearheading our attack.
Sean Parrish took the place of JJ Melligan who is on international duty with the Republic of Ireland U21 squad.
After a scrappy start Bradley fired over the top of the goal on seven minutes but then went on to open the scoring eight minutes later with his first goal for the club since signing from Chesterfield. An angled drive from Cornelly was only parried by Fraser Digby leaving Shayne Bradley the easiest of chances to fire the rebound in from close range.
Soon after Dion Scott was forced to leave the field with what looked like a bad shoulder injury but he returned five minutes later much to the relief of the Harriers contingent.
Lincoln came close to adding a second goal mid way through the half when Allan Pearce swept through the Harriers defence. Luckily for us Danny Williams was alert to the danger and managed to get back just before he had chance to do any damage.
It was Danny who came up with our only sight of a goal in the first half when he tried to chip Alan Marriott in the Lincoln goal. But it didn't catch out Marriott who was alert enough to collect the ball from underneath the crossbar.
Lincoln came close to adding to the scoreline on another two occasions in this half but good defending from Lee Ayres and Craig Hinton denied them the chance. Ayres did well to block Bradley's thunderous shot and Hinton was in the right place to clear off the line on 42 minutes when Ben Futcher headed Paul Mayo's free kick goalwards after Digby completely missed his punch.