The Harriers turned everything on its head today when, after a week of turmoil within the club, they went up to second placed Grimsby Town and came back with an astonishing 2-0 victory. Before the game the hosts had been on an eight game unbeaten run and were odds on favourites to win this game and win it comfortably. We had seen two major players, Chey Dunkley and Nathan Blissett, leave the club in an effort to stabilise the finances caused by a missing boards incompetence and the fans were wondering how on earth we were going to end the season in one piece before the tallyman came to visit.
As it was we started the game with the rookie Reece Hales partnering Craig Reid upfront in place of Blissett (we had no choice really) and Jared Hodgkiss back from his one match suspension. In the middle of the defence Jamie Grimes was in for the departed Dunkley while on the bench was our new loan signing Sam Long from Oxford.
It took just a little under two minutes for Marvin Johnson to silence the home fans in a crowd of 3446. From an unsuccessful Town corner the ball broke free and was collected by Matt Robinson and then played forward to the handily placed Johnson. Magic Marvin calmly approached the goal and slotted home into the corner of James McKeowns net to score a beautiful opening goal.
Grimsby came back with a good chance for Nathan Arnold to draw them quickly level but Danny Lewis' fine fingertip save put paid to that and then he somehow got a hand to Jason Browns effort from the edge of the box. The best was saved for a few minutes later when made a great double save from Harry Pells shot and then from the rebound he captured a perfect header from their star striker Lenell John-Lewis.
The Harriers were being bombarded by Grimsby and Jamie Grimes came to our rescue when he got his head to a cross from Aswad Thomas with a Grimsby striker waiting behind him for the connection. Craig Reid should have added to the scoreline a few minutes prior to the half time whistle but his angled shot just clipped the wrong side of the post.