Craig Reid gets his scoring boots back

The Harriers played against probably the worst side to have visited Aggborough this season and thankfully won.  Apart from a ten minute spell at the start of the second half, when Nuneaton had obviously had an ear bashing from their manager Liam Daish, they rarely threatened at all and the Harriers could, and should, have gone on to rack up far more than the three goals than they did.  Sods Law will say at the end of the season that we'll be just one goal short of sixth place and will look back on this game as the one that lost us the chance of the play offs.

Kyle Storer returned to the side from injury, looking a little rusty, and replaced the now departed Matt Robinson after he returned to Luton.  There was also a bit of a change up at the front with Callum Gittings returning to the starting line-up at the expense of Reece Styche who dropped to the bench.  Also on the bench for the first time were recent signings Jos Mayebi and Jordan Tunnicliffe.

After an hesitant start the Harriers soon got into gear and began to run the show.  It took just six minutes for the Harriers to start the scoring when a mistake from Nuneatons Anthony Charles allowed Craig Reid to run on to his misplaced back header and go for goal.  He quickly ran at an angle to the edge of the area and struck the ball firmly and cleanly beyond the reach of Christian Dibble in the Boro goal.

Jack Byrne, in a continuation of his improved form of late, came close to adding a further two goals when, firstly, he couldn't quite connect cleanly with one ball across the face of goal and sent it just wide and then a few minutes later he sent a neat header just over the bar from a corner.

The visitors had a rare excursion forward when Adam Dawson robbed Kevin Nicholson of the ball and sent in a shot that looked to be going in. Going in that was until Jamie Grimes somehow got back quickly to block it.

The Reds lead was doubled five minutes before the break when Kyle Storer, playing against his old club, was played in by Josh Gowling and fired in an unstoppable shot to give us a comfortable lead going in for half time.

As expected Nuneaton came back out following a roasting and took the game to the Harriers from the off.  They never looked like scoring but they gave our defenders a torrid time if only for ten minutes.

We slowly began to get back into it but of cause things will never go smoothly for us and we somehow contrived to gift them a lifeline when a Dawson cross came flying in and Josh Gowling tried to head it over the bar but didn't realise that Danny Lewis was off his line and had no chance of helping it over as it dropped into the back of the net.

The visitors had another short period of self belief but that soon vanished as once more we took control.  Marvin Johnson was running the Boro defenders ragged and then sending over cross after cross but with no one sharp enough to convert them.  Craig Reid was also having one of his best games for us although he was being given so much room he couldn't really fail not to have a good game.

By the time our third, and final, goal came Nuneaton had more or less given up.  We began to use the space being given to us by passing the ball around in triangles and then losing it eventually.  I would rather see us going for goal more and improving our goal difference but I suppose some people like to see it.  It was from one of these spells that Jack Byrne completed our scoring.

Just over fifteen minutes were left to play and it was from one of these passing phases that Johnson played the ball across to Aman Verma in front of the goal.  He opted not to shoot when he saw Byrne along side him and better placed so a slid the ball to his right and Jack slipped the ball beyond Dibbles reach and into the net.

We had a few more shots on goal from Reid and Byrne but they had decided they had damaged Nuneaton enough and the game played out with no further incident.

The win puts us back up to eighth place in the table but without a League game now for another eighteen days, when we're at home to Lincoln, we'll just have to bide our time and hope other sides in action this weekend don't overtake us.  We do have a trip to Bradford PA to look forward to in the FA Trophy though.

 Goals for Harriers: Reid 6, Storer 40, Byrne 72
 Goal for Nuneaton: Gowling 62 (og)

REFEREE:

Mr A Bromley Devon