Promising new Harriers
The new look Harriers showed their faces at home for the first time this season and what we saw looked promising.
All thoughts before the start of these run of friendlies was about the lack of quality in our small squad. Small it may be but we saw quality in abundance especially during the second half when Jan Molby made a mass substitution.
Those that caught the eye were Youssou Diop, John Danby (throughout), Rob O'Brien, Chris McHale and Simon Russell.
City started the strongest with Lee Miller coming close to opening the scoring with a diving header that only just cleared the bar. The ex Ipswich striker, Alun Armstrong also looked useful in the early stages.
Gradually the match settled down to a more relaxed tempo and we saw a chance from Jesper go well wide of the post when he should really have done better.
Abdou Sall earned himself a stern talking to at the close of the half. That's just Sall being his usual hot headed self.
The second half was more of the same until mid-way when Jan bought on Scott Rickards, Simon Russell, Jamie Gleeson, Richie Appleby, Rob O'Brien and, for simplicities sake, Freddy Advice.
The game came alive then and we saw some great interplay between Apples, Gleeson and Russell that twice would have resulted in goals for us if it wasn't for the greediness of first Russell then Gleeson.
With the game stretching out to a deadlock it took just one momentary lapse in defence to let City in. The ball was played out wide by a City player and was returned quickly for Paul Heffernan to glance it past the wrong footed Danby.
All of the new players that we saw tonight didn't disappoint. There were no passengers and unlike previous pre-seasons there wasn't one player that had the fans wondering why we were bothering with him.
Downsides from tonight would have to be a very poor turn out by Joe Public. The reason would have to be because of the non-existent publicity allied with the comparative high price for admission.
Ok, Bristol City are not the biggest attraction in the football world but Cheltenham managed to get 4,250 for their game against Birmingham City last weekend. That's a damn sight more than the estimated 300 that turned up tonight.
Harriers:
Danby, McHale, Burton, Sall, Hatswell, Keates, Brown, Jenkins, Christiansen, , Diop, Foster.
Subs:
Appleby, Russell, Gleeson, Rickards, Advice, Lewis, O'Brien.
|
HOME