Did we actually want to win this?

The Harriers crashed out of the FA Cup at the very first hurdle today against a very ordinary looking York City.

No.  Scrub that and let's start again!

The Harriers whimpered, surrendered, gave up, didn't look interested, abandoned all hope, gave up the fight and crumbled hopelessly out of the FA Cup at the very first hurdle today against a very ordinary looking York City.  That's more like it.

To sum it all up we were pathetic and if this club fails to survive until the end of the season, or earlier, then this is the game that fingers will be pointed at as the reason.  It's common knowledge that the club are looking for new owners and that we are in a terrible situation financially and the reward from todays game, £12,500, would have been made to feel very welcome by owners old or new.

We started the game with a sparse bench that included every player available to us along with Rob Thompson-Brown who had been called back from loan at Redditch Utd.  Marc Williams was not allowed to play by Wrexham, Aaron Griffiths was suspended and John Finnigan left the club yesterday.

City started the game with David McDermott but another former Harrier, Duane Courtney, was not included in the squad at all.  They did include new loan signing Chris Smith who was bought in from Mansfield Town yesterday.

Apart from the first few minutes when Lee Morris and Callum Gittings had a faint chance of scoring it was City who started the game the strongest and that's the way it remained through most of the game.   Once our initial flurry was forgotten City took control of the game and in the twenty fourth minute took the lead that we would never recover from.

The City keeper Michael Ingham cleared a ball forward to beyond the halfway line that Daniel Racchi collected then lobbed over the Harriers keeper Danny Lewis.  Route one at it's simplest.

City should have doubled the lead soon after but Michael Rankines shot was blocked on the line by Lee Vaughan

On forty minutes the Harriers were forced into a substitution when Keith Briggs, who suffered a hamstring injury at Kettering last week, was again taken off with a recurrence of the injury.  Ollie Thorne came on in his place and might regret doing so.

For the remainder of the half we seemed to pick up our game slightly and the best chance fell for Chris McPhee after Matty Blair played him in with a sharp ball from out wide.  McPhee worked himself into a good shooting position but his shot went out for a corner.

The second half was no improvement on the first period and we still seemed to lack any kind of idea or cohesion as a team.  We had one chance early on when Blair was given the ball by Lee Vaughan, who was now playing in a midfield role, but he ran out of options about what to do with it and the scoring chance was gone.

It didn't matter anyway because a minute later the game was over for us.  Ollie Thorne slipped on the wet grass and that allowed Rankine through on goal.  He could have scored himself with no problem but elected to square it to Jon Smith instead who slid the ball into the net and put City firmly into the draw for the next round of the cup.

With the Harriers now faced with a disaster Steve Burr made a double swap and took off Lee Morris and Mark Albrighton for Nick Wright and David Hankin respectively.  Hankins first task was to collect a yellow card from the ref after he went in for a 50/50 ball and left James Meredith writhing theatrically on the floor.

It wasn't the only 50/50 ball we got involved in either because a just a few minutes later a Harriers player picked up his second red card in as many weeks.  Thorne tried to play the ball away from our goal but over hit it and then tried to regain possession but only succeeded in colliding with Danny Parslow and sending him crashing to the floor.  The red was a bit harsh but that's just how it goes for us lately.

City had by now settled for what they had but it still left time for a moment of drama.  Lee Vaughan powered into the box and sent in a shot that ricochet back off the post to Matty Blair who returned the ball into the back of the net.  Somehow the linesman decided that Blair was offside even though the post played the ball back to him so he could not be offside.  No-one else was stood in an offside position so it must have been Blair getting penalised.  The ref didn't overrule it and I believe he's not allowed to anyway.  Archaic!!

Anyway that's it.  At least we have 13th place to look forward to.

 Goals for York City: Racchi 24, J Smith 53

REFEREE:

Mr R Merchant Staffordshire