With a new man at the helm the Harriers travelled up early to Macclesfield looking to win their first game of the season. Up early because the game was being televised by the BT Sport cameras while the new man in charge of rescuing us from relegation is the former Forest Green and Leeds Utd manager Dave Hockaday. As it was we didn't get that long awaited win and neither did we excel in front of the cameras.
We started with a few changes to the side and to the bench with Alex Palmer dropped in favour of Dean Snedker while new loan signing, Jordan Murphy, replaced the injured Tahvon Campbell out wide. On the bench was another new signing with Callum Hassan taking the place of Calvin Dinsley while Lathaniel Rowe-Turner also went to the bench after Jordan Tunnicliffe returned from suspension. There was still no sign of Gurjit Singh as he remains out of the side through injury.
The first half was a slightly turgid affair with the home side shading the first fifteen minutes but once the Harriers lost their nerves we began to play the ball around nicely until it came to the final third and the strikers failed to do their stuff. We could have been without a striker just a few minutes into the game when Reece Styche stupidly kicked out at Macclesfields Tony Diagne after Diagne had appeared to foul him in a 50/50 jump for the ball. Styche was lucky that the referee had failed to see the incident otherwise we could have been seeing a second red card of the season for Styche.
In goal for us Snedker, playing his first game since a mistake at home to Wrexham towards the start of the season, was having a blinder but he couldn't do much about the poor defending in front of him that allowed Town to open the scoring. As usual we fell asleep at a corner and when George Pilkington's header came back into the area Diagne struck but the ball was blocked on the line by Kevin Toner. Six Harriers players stood ball watching as Diagne fired in the rebound.
A few minutes later and Macc had extended their lead.
Just after Snedker had brilliantly saved from Dean Whitehead the hosts were awarded another corner and again Pilkington made the most of the static Harriers defence to play the ball back in for Danny Rowe to fire the ball home.