Harriers fail against a poor City side

The Harriers failed to take advantage of being at home to a poor York City side in this FA Trophy game and will now have to trek North on Tuesday evening for an un-wanted replay instead of heading South for a Blue Square game at Woking.  This one will still be winnable though and we should have Mark Creighton back by then following his quick recovery from injury and making it to the bench today.

We started with almost the same side that gave value for money against Histon in mid-week but sadly couldn't give us the same kind of result.  The only difference was Lee Baker getting re-called to the side in place of the cup tied Craig Armstrong and on the bench Paul Bignot made way for Creights.

A messy opening period of the game saw City slightly on top as we started in our usual way; slowly.  Baker came to our rescue in only the fifth minute of the game with an excellent tackle in dispossessing Daniel McBreen just as the City striker had broken the Harriers off side trap and was about to make his way, alone, into the area.

Our first chance on goal came just over five minutes later when Justin Richards fired a low shot towards the City goal after Matt Barnes-Homer played him in with a fine ball.  Michael Ingham, in goal for York, saved it easily enough though.

Slowly but surely we were starting to get into the game and had chances fall the way of Darryl Knights on three different occasions but each one was weakly struck and gave the keeper no trouble in saving them.  Then just as it looked like we were getting the upper hand some poor defensive work let in City to score.

We had just seen a great shot from McDermott that had been blocked by Mark Robinson with the ball being cleared away up the pitch.  It was then played on to Adam Boyes on the edge of the box and, with defenders backing off him, he struck the ball well to send it curling past Bartlett and into the net.

We tried our best to regain the equality with a shot from Richards that was put onto the bar and bounced back for Andy Ferrell to return with interest but, as with most financial institutions today, the interest was worthless.

With five minutes of the half left the City keeper provided the afternoons comedy spot when he went down under an innocuous challenge from MBH and proceeded to make the most of it.  After a few minutes of treatment the physio walked away thinking his job was done then stood watching from the other end of the goalmouth as Ingham pretended to do up his laces.  He then put his gloves on and then moved the ball about a couple of times before actually taking the kick and all the while the referee stood by doing nothing while the Harriers fans hurled derision the keepers way.

The ref, to his credit, did add three minutes extra time to the half and a further four minutes at the end of the game.