A win at Weymouth at last

A deflection off Darryl Knights gave the Harriers their first three 'on the road' points at Weymouth today after spending most of the second period under the cosh.  Justin Richards had already scored his sixth goal of the season earlier in the game to equalise but with time running out and the game looking like a draw up popped Knightsy.

For the fifth time in a row the Reds fielded the same starting line-up but this time there was a different look to the bench with Dean Bennett missing and Michael Bowler in his place.  Bowler had been out of the squad since a disastrous showing at Mansfield over a month ago.

With summer back in favour too the game kicked off in bright autumnal sunshine at Weymouth.  After a steady opening first few minutes it was the Harriers who were to show their intentions when a cross from Martin Brittain found Brian Smikle but he could only head the ball back across the face of the Weymouth goal.

Weymouth responded with Cameron Mawer sending in a cross that both Michael Malcolm and Pierre Joseph-Dubois had a crack at but both times Mark Creighton cleared their attempts away to safety.  Suddenly Weymouth seem to be getting on top after early Harriers pressure and the inevitable happened when they score the first goal of the afternoon.

Again some poor defending is to blame as a long goal kick beats the Harriers offside trap to allow Dubois the room to go forward with the ball and slot it past Adam Bartlett.  Not to worry though because it's not too long before Justin Richards pulls a goal back for us.

He collected the ball well outside the box and, with the home team also demonstrating some poor defending, he strolled past them and fired the ball beyond Richie Barnard to draw us level.

Weymouth weren't going to sit back and allow us to score again and a chance fell almost from the re-start for Ryan Williams to get his side back in front when he powered into the box but just as he set himself up to shoot Russ Penn intervened to put the ball out for a corner.  Dubois had a header go just over the bar and then he played in Williams again but this time the diminutive injury prone winger was fractionally offside.

The home side continued to batter the Harriers defence for the remainder of the half with just the one great chance for us when Brittain crossed to the far post, Luke Jones headed it back and Richards volleyed over. An even better chance fell for Malcolm when he contrived to miss an open goal.

Bartlett uncharacteristically dropped the ball after catching a routine cross and Chris McPhee rushed in to send it back towards the goal.  For reasons known only to himself Malcolm tried to help it on it's way and only managed to send the ball the wrong side of the post to the dis-belief of everyone in the ground.

So the half ended all square and set us up nicely to go on and win the game.