Harriers make hard work of it again

The Harriers and Mansfield continued their grip on the top two places in the League today when our heroes finally pulled themselves together to finish off Lincoln City 3-0 while the favourites for the title, Mansfield, went up to Barrow and returned home with an impressive 4-0 victory at a ground where most teams find it hard to score one single goal.

In the other three play-off places Newport struggled to a no score draw at Cambridge last night while Wrexham surprisingly lost at Woking.  Southport came the closest to recording the shock of the day when Grimsby managed to score a last gasp equaliser after trailing their visitors at 2-1 for all of the second half.

The wins for the top two see them stretch the gap to ten points between us and Wrexham with Grimsby thirteen points behind.  It's probably too late for Hereford now but their win at Macclesfield pushes them to within ten points of Grimsby with four games left to play.

Todays game against Lincoln kicked off with the same team that started in that brilliant win at Luton last Monday but on the bench there was just one change with James Vincent dropping out and Martin Devaney coming in once more.  No reason has been given for the Viniestas absence but hopefully it's not an injury because today Keith Briggs left the field with a broken bone in his hand and Danny Pilkington was subbed before half time with a hamstring injury.

As in the past month or so the Harriers were slow out of the traps again and our early play was scrappy with plenty of passes going astray.  Lee Vaughan seemed to be out of sorts and on a couple of occasions his normal runs down the wing never happened and instead most of his moves seemed to end up with the ball going out of play.

Thank God for Danny Jackman then because the busy midfielder worked his little socks off all game and it was his goal that broke the ice after twenty seven minutes of non action apart from a well worked free kick from Pilkington that saw the City keeper, Paul Farman, fling himself towards the top corner to keep out.

A few minutes after that the goal came and Jackman claimed his first ever goal for us when Michael Gash played him in to direct an arrow-like shot into the back of the City net.

Two minutes later the lead could have been doubled, twice, when Gash tried his luck from the touchline and again when Malbon tried to toe poke the ball home but Farman got down to it and saved easily.

No more real chances for either side followed that, apart from a header from Chey Dunkley that went narrowly over, but with halftime approaching Pilkington was suddenly withdrawn from the game following a poor cross in followed by pulling up sharply.  Martin Devaney came on for him and it's to be hoped that the injury isn't too bad.

The second half was, frankly, a big disappointment for the Harriers faithful.  Ok we scored twice more to put the game to bed but up until the last ten minutes it was far from convincing.

City came out with a little more fire in their bellies than we did but they could do nothing with the possession that they found themselves gifted.  In fact they only had one shot on target throughout the entire ninety minutes when Jamie Taylor forced Danny Lewis into his only real save of the day.  The rest of the time Danny was just a spectator with the odd tidy up in his area.

We too were finding it hard to find any openings against a well drilled defence and most of our chances went wide, as one from Briggs, before the second goal finally arrived and what a superb goal it was from the usually much maligned Kyle Storer.

Against the run of play Marvin Johnson, on a few minutes earlier for the injured Briggs, broke free and sent a long ball down the channel to Storer on the edge of the area.  With no help available from his team mates Farman committed himself too far from goal and Storer cheekily flipped the ball over him with the side of his boot and into the net.  All is forgiven Kyle.

Ten minutes later it was game, set, match to the Harriers and this time it was yet another brilliantly cheeky goal from a player that was having his worst game in Harriers colours since he joined us three years ago.

Again Johnson was the supplier of the ammunition as he played in Lee Vaughan to take a run towards goal from close to the touchline.  He easily beat the lost at sea City defender and advanced towards the goal from where, normally, you would have expected him to pass the ball towards the likes of Malbon or Gash but instead took the shot himself.  It crept in under Farman before ending up against the far netting and just behind the post.

With time running down Callum Gittings came on for a tiring Malbon and could have scored twice himself but his first shot went too high and his second was too week.

We now have a full week off before we travel to Wrexham next Saturday and, to be truthful, if we don't play better than we did today we could be handing Mansfield a big advantage.  They play manager and Barnes-Homer less Macclesfield at home on Tuesday so we might be needing a win in Wales to keep our title winning hopes alive anyway.

 Goals for Harriers: Jackman 27, Storer 80, L Vaughan 89

REFEREE:

Mr C Breakspear Surrey