After our fine start to the new season, with wins against Mansfield and Darlington, we were sitting near the top of the table on maximum points before today's game.

Meanwhile down at the bottom were Bury with nil points after losing both their games so far.  At Swansea and at home to Scunthorpe last week.

On paper we were odds on to win but in reality we were poor.  In fact both teams were poor.

Bury had come to defend in numbers and throughout they kept three men on Bo and two on Andy Bishop.  It seemed to be working because during the first half neither of them had a sniff of the ball.

We couldn't return the favour and seemed unable to keep one man on Harpal Singh at times.  He was given free rein to cause plenty of damage down the flanks and only good defending from Scott Stamps was keeping him out.

Our normal passing game had gone missing too with many passes going astray and some of our players failing to challenge for loose balls.

We had only two attacks of note when we saw a Andy Bishop shot turned round the post by the Bury keeper, Garner.  Then Sam Shilton contrived to miss an open goal with the keeper stranded.

It was in the 28th minute that we were punished.  Bury, in one of their rare attacks, played the ball to the corner and, with Charnock advancing, and the Harriers defence backing off, he played the ball across the area to the unmarked Porter to sweep the ball home from 10yds out.

Apart from a speculative shot from Bishop the half petered out to the break with Bury happy to defend and the Harriers unable to break them down.

After the break things improved slightly and we started to put some pressure on the Bury goal.  In the space of two minutes we saw a Sean Flynn effort go just wide then Bo went close with a point blank header that Garner did well to save.  Dean Bennett saw a shot from the edge of the area go well over the top of the stand.

Just after all hell broke loose.  First the Bury number 3, Woodthorpe, was booked for a challenge and then a few minutes later Bo appeared to be tripped in the area but the referee waved away the calls for a penalty.
As he was making his way back he was first tripped by Greg Strong and then Woodthorpe swung a punch at Bo, luckily not connecting properly.

The ref booked Strong and another player for poking his nose in but totally ignored the offence by Woodthorpe.  He should have walked.

Little was seen of the Bury attack after that although Harpal Singh did see his header crash against the bottom of the woodwork.

With a flurry of substitutes the game seemed to be drifting away from the Harriers and so it proved when two of the Bury subs combined to dash the Reds hope of a point.

Gareth Seddon, who had only been on the field for a minute was fed the ball by another sub, Gunby.  In acres of space he drove a powerful shot past the Brockstar who had no chance of saving it.

That was the signal for the Harriers faithful to stream out hoping that this dire performance will not be repeated on Monday afternoon.  If it is then I think a phone call to JJ won't go amiss.