The Harriers took the gloss off Burton Albions play-off campaign tonight when they ran out 4-1 winners in an excellent game - from our point of view. Burton looked a lack lustre side during a first half that saw Darryl Knights grab a duo and Iyseden Christie his eighteenth goal of the season.
In the second half a tactical change by Nigel Clough saw the visitors come back into the game but in the end the result wasn't to matter because the only other team that could replace them, Stevenage, lost at home to Northwich. At the other end of the table it was a short sweet goodbye to Farsley Celtic after they more or less got relegated after just one season leaving Altrincham and Halifax Town to out do each other on the final day.
There were two changes from the side that lost at Weymouth last Saturday. Alex Jeannin was un-well so Andy Ferrell dropped back in his place to allow Darryl Knights to return to the starting line-up. Dean Coleman came back in goal in place of Chris MacKenzie. With Jeff Kenna no longer at Aggborough Paul Bignot kept his place at number three.
The first ten minutes of the game the Harriers looked a bit off the pace and it was Burton who were to pose the most problems at first. Eventually we came back into the game and a fine goal from Darryl Knights opened the proceedings for us.
Matt Barnes-Homer broke down the right hand side of the pitch to send in a speculative cross that the Burton keeper Glynn Poole managed to get to but he collided with his own defender leaving Knights to get his head under the ball and loop it into the net.
A few minutes later and we had silenced the Burton fans by taking a two goal lead when again MBH sent in a cross, a better one this time, and Christie had the easiest of tasks to tap it into the net.
Burton had now lost their earlier momentum and were having a job creating anything at all. Both their star players, Darryl Clare and Keith Gilroy, looked off the pace and when they did get hold of the ball they were coming up against a Harriers defence that was letting very little through.
Their first real chance came via a blatant dive from Clare on the edge of the area following a brush with Simon Russell. After an age sorting the wall out the free kick came to nothing anyway when it came back off the wall twice to finally be cleared away up-field.
The Harriers upped the pressure further after that and could easily have increased the lead on more than one occasion. Christie had two chances to add to his tally when his first shot was well saved by Poole and the next, a few seconds later, was blocked by Aaron Webster on the line.
Three minutes before halftime the Harriers increased the lead to three when Knights scored his second goal of the night.
Russell Penn played in a perfect pass through the area that Christie then stepped over to dummy the Albion defender. It ran through for Knights to crash a low drive beyond the reach of Poole to send us in to the break three nil up against the promotion hopefuls who were now looking at no way back.
 |
| HOME FORUM | You have arrived at an archived page. Please use one of the links to the left to reach either the current website or the Harriers Chatter forum. Thank you. |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Paul Bignot
