Harriers fail to ignite

This was a game that promised fireworks but apart from taking the lead with a first ever League goal for Simon Heslop and applying plenty of pressure we again ended up on the losing side.    The blame for this has got to be laid at the door of our strikers.

As in previous games they again failed to shoot on sight and continually refused to get into a decent shooting position.    Christie, Atieno and Sheldon just do not have the killer instinct that is needed in a successful footballing side and until we get someone up front with that kind of instinct then we will never get out of this League in the right direction.

Today Christie started on the bench along with Chris McHale, hoping for his first game of the season.    Starting the game for City was Billy Jones, a player that I still can't understand why we let go to see him eventually replaced by Wayne Evans.

The game started at a cracking pace with the Harriers gaining at least 75% of the possession and shots from Heslop and Tai testing the Exeter keeper, Paul Jones, within the first ten minutes of the game.    The main threat for City was coming from the long throw-in's from Jon Challinor and all it needed was a decent header from one of those and we would have been a goal down.    Luckily for us no-one managed to get on the end of one in the first half but they did in the second.

On thirty minutes the Harriers were struck a severe blow when the industrious Simon Russell was fouled on the edge of the area and fell badly.    With his arm hanging limply it was obvious that he had suffered a break of some kind and went off immediately to be replaced by Christie.

Later on it transpired that he had dislocated his wrist.    He'll be out for at least a month with that.

We had further efforts from Mark Jackson and Gareth Sheldon, playing against his old club, came close to putting us ahead when he saw his rasping drive turned round the post by Paul Jones but the first period of play finished goal-less.