Harriers get the Wembley blues

Northwich gained their revenge for the exit from the FA Trophy at our hands by coming to Aggborough today and finally putting paid to our slender play-off hopes with this solitary goal win.    We did little to stop them getting their own back though, we just stood aside and did nothing.

With one eye on the Trophy final in May we have been playing this way ever since we qualified and with similar poor results against Tamworth, St Albans Burton and now Northwich it appears that must be the reason why.

Even when we had gone a goal down we just didn't seem interested in making a fight of it and it took a halftime rollicking along with an early return to the pitch for what looked like a spot of line dancing to get them to understand that we still need to win games between now and May.

Mark Yates keeps on telling the fans that the last result was just a blip on our play-off hopes so maybe it's time he told his own team because they just don't seem to have got it into their thick heads yet.

The game started in freezing, pouring rain that forced most of the watching crowd towards the back of the stands but that soon cleared to a brightish afternoon.    Yates chose to go with the two remaining new boys - Andy Ferrell has returned to Hereford for treatment to an injury - slotting into the places of Jeff Kenna (Glenn Wilson) and Michael Blackwood (Jon Brady).

Brady didn't last long on the left side of the field and swapped places with Simon Russell mid way through the half.    The upshot was that instead of one wideman performing well and another poorly we now had two widemen playing badly.    Please do not do that again Mark, it didn't work and never will.    Just send Brady back to Cambridge and stick with Blackwood.

In fact I would have bought Blackwood on earlier to replace the very, very awful Jonny Harkness.    We might have at least kept the ball on the pitch and Blackwood would have been able to find a team mate with a decent pass.

With us looking so lethargic it didn't take the visitors long to test a Scott Bevan just back from injury.    Danny Mayman played a long ball into the box for the diminutive Carlos Roca who then laid it back for Michael Carr to send in a shot that crashed onto the bar with Bevan beaten.

It went back into play but fell to Harkness who then tried to clear it but only succeeded in giving it back to the opposition.

The Vics won a free kick on the edge of the area after Stuart Whitehead had clipped the ankles of Roca as he tried to force himself past him.    The referee booked Whitehead as Michael Byrne stepped up to convert the free kick by curling a shot around the wall and past Bevan who for reasons known only to himself was unsighted behind the wall.

The goal seemed incapable of waking the Harriers from the deep sleep that they had drifted into and that was just the fans.    Christie did get a chance to open our scoring on thirty five minutes but was robbed of the chance by Phil Charnock just as he was about to shoot.

Gavin Hurren saw his weak header fail to worry the Northwich keeper, Senior, and the half stuttered to a close with the majority of the crowd having lost interest along with our heroes.