The Harriers spoiled Burton's promotion celebrations, and Setanta's fawning over them, today when they came back from a goal down just before half time to end up winning 2-1 and still in with a big chance of making the play-offs. Justice was clearly done because their goal was scored following fouls on both Chris McPhee and Martin Riley with Setanta going home without the live promotion of one of their preferred teams.
In front of the biggest crowd at Aggborough since the visit of Hereford Utd in October 2005 (3241) the game kicked off a few minutes late in glorious Spring sunshine. Un-expectedly there was another start for Andy Ferrell following his return from injury and even more disappointingly Matt Barnes-Homer was to be playing as the only striker in the team but with the support of Darryl Knights and Chris McPhee.
I never expected to see such negative tactics from Mark Yates for such an important game as this but thankfully he saw sense in the second half and we reverted to a far more attacking format.
The first half was a poor spectacle for both sets of fans with neither side seemingly capable of keeping the ball on the ground. Russ Penn had our first attempt on goal but his low shot was easily collected by Saul Deeney in the Albion goal.
Burton came back at us with a chance for Darren Stride going well over the bar. The game then settled down to a mixture of poor passing and hoofball from both sides.
It took another twenty minutes before anything of note happened again. Darryl Knights got on the end of a through ball from Barnes-Homer and sent a curling effort just wide of the upright. He missed another good chance a minute later when MBH supplied him with the ball again and this time it was a header that went just wide of the target.
Five minutes before half time both sides managed to get their first real shots on target. Andy Ferrell was the first, for us, when his low shot got blocked by the keeper and then almost straight away after Shaun Harrad saw Bartlett save a fierce drive from him. On the stroke of half time the Harriers went behind to a goal that should never have been.
Burton had been given a free kick in the middle of the park and it was sent over by Aaron Webster into the goal mouth. Jake Buxton went up for the ball and shoved Chris McPhee over while heading the ball across for Lee Morris to climb over Martin Riley and stick his knee into his back. The referee gave the goal.
It was a goal that the prospective Champions had done nothing to deserve and should never have been given by the one eyed Staffordshire referee.
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Dean Bennett
