Harriers taste their first home defeat

The Harriers came back down to earth with a bang tonight with this 2-1 home defeat to Brackley a stark contrast to the 6-1 drubbing that we gave to Curzon on Saturday.  Then we played with a fluency and skill that belied our level of National League North football but against Brackley all that had disappeared and we struggled at times to put two passes together, looked bereft of ideas and only tested the goalkeeper once in the first eighty minutes of the game.

With the Harriers manager John Eustace continuing with the same team that beat Curzon it was a somewhat strange opening period.  The fans expectancy was high but that didn't last long as the cracks began to show and Brackley showed us how to play football at this level and it was far from pretty.  The officials didn't help matters much either with some strange decisions throughout the game including a crunching, two footed tackle on James McQuilkin only earned a yellow card for Adam Walker yet a naive and weak challenge by Jordan Tunnicliffe just inside the box earned the visitors a penalty.

The ex Nuneaton man James Armson dispatched the ball beyond the grasp of Sam Hornby to give his side the lead.

We tried to respond but we just couldn't seem to get a clear sight of goal or was it that we wanted too much time and would rather try and walk the ball in.  Elton N'Gwatala and Arthur Gnahoua were both guilty of that and Emmanuel Dieseruvwe often found himself out of touch with some of the crosses being put in to do much with them.

At the break it was Brackley that went in with the smile on their faces and the Harriers that trudged off wondering why our free flowing football wasn't working against a massed defence.

We were expecting better in the second half but sadly it took too long coming.  Brackley came straight at us again and obviously weren't going to give us an inch.  Zaine Francis-Angol cleared one off the line early doors and then cleared a shot that had hit the base of the post minutes later.

Eustace rang the changes early with Robert Stambolziev coming on for N'Gwatala who was still having a poor game.  The Australian winger being left footed looked uncomfortable on the right side of the pitch though and didn't really have much influence on the game.  A better move would have been to take off Tyrell Waite instead because he'd been anonymous for most of the night.  Andre Brown also came on in place of Gnahoua and he didn't shine either

Soon after the subs had been made Brackley got their second goal.  Brackley had forced another corner and again we defended it poorly to allow Alex Gudger the simple task of nudging the ball into the net and send the handful of Brackley fans into raptures.  We had a mountain to climb.

Thankfully that mountain was and easy climb and we managed to pull a goal back a few minutes later when Waite was bought down in the area and then got back up to convert it.  So in a way it was good that he didn't go off.

The goal set us up for a storming finish but time ran out too soon with the Reds breaking through to within sight of the goal but again not doing enough to actually get a shot in.  The closest we came was when Dieseruvwe saw a last gasp header blocked on the line and in the end Brackley ran out comfortable winners on the night.

 Goal for Harriers: Waite 77 (pen)
 Goals for Brackley: Armson 35 (pen), Gudger 73

REFEREE:

Mr B Cooke Staffordshire