Steve Burrs first game in charge of the Harriers could have ended in disaster following two terrible mistakes by Dean Coleman that gifted goals for Crawley but thankfully he was saved by his righthand man and his captain. John Finnigan popped up with his first goal for the Harriers and late on in the game Chris McPhee saved our blushes with a well taken, but deflected, goal.
Dean Bennett was missing with a groin injury and Aaron Farrell was missing completely and so could have been a victim of the flu bug that Robbie Matthews was suffering from in the Lewes game. Finnigan came on in place of Benno, Damian Spencer played instead of Farrell and Kyle Hadley came back to the bench hoping to get his first game since coming back from a groin operation.
It only took three minutes to show that it wasn't going to be Colemans day when a mis-hit goal kick fell into the path of Barry Cogan. Thankfully Cogan was shepherded away from goal by Duane Courtney but it only took another ten minutes before bad luck really did strike.
Crawley played a ball into the area but to no-one in particular so, in comparative safety, Gavin Caines headed it back towards Coleman. The Harriers keeper came to collect the ball and then looked away and fumbled it into the path of the goal hanging Charles Adememo. The highly rated striker didn't spurn the chance and took the ball around Coleman and into an empty net.
We almost gave a second goal away just moments later when the defence found themselves in each others way and almost allowed Michael Malcolm a free shot on goal but Chris McPhee was there to clear it away to safety.
Up until ten minutes from the break the Harriers continued to look out of sorts and struggled to find any kind of formation that would suit them against a very fast Crawley front line. Eventually they did start to get back into the game when Brian Smikle whipped a cross over that deceived everyone apart from Sam Rents who managed to block the ball on the line and boot it away up field.
Damian Spencer followed that up with a good effort low down that took the Town keeper, Simon Rayner, by surprise and he spilled it towards Smikle but Rents got back just in time to do enough to put Smikle off.
The half finished with an improvement from us but it hadn't been enough to pull a goal back. It was going to need a halftime pep talk by the new manager to point out just where we were going wrong.