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Match Details: Saturday 2nd March 2002 Northern Premier League Premier Division
Attendance: 269 Marine: Clarke Wareing Mullin Lally Rimmer Gautrey Bainbridge Hussin Black Townsend Douglas Subs: Morgan Robinson Dolan The Tigers failed to reproduce the form of recent games and gave an uninspiring performance at College Road. To add to their problems, Martin Filson was sent off in the last minutes for comments made to referee Paul Ireland. Whilst you can't condone dissent, Mr. Ireland had a dreadful game throughout being totally inconsistent and getting key incidents wrong. With regard to Martin, he was clearly pulled back going for the ball, but the referee chose to ignore it or perhaps he didn't see it as frequently he was too far away from the action. Minutes before Hyde should have had a penalty when Steve Foster was pulled down as he burst through. This was the theme of the game. Dominic Crookes did one foul in the game and was booked, Anton Lally did numerous, was eventually booked but then not sent off when a worse one followed. However the Tigers can't just blame the referee. They started badly and didn't significantly improve. A slow start after a two week lay-off resulted in conceding a goal in 5 minutes as Bainbridge scored from close range at the second attempt as David Felgate saved the first point blank effort. The rest of the half was pretty even with new signing Lee Madin showing some good touches, but Hyde gave the ball away far too easily and didn't show great urgency in getting it back. However in injury time good work by, skipper for the day, Simon Yeo on the right enabled David Nolan to head home his cross and get a kick in his unmentionables for his efforts. Marine stepped up the pace in the second half but it was still a poor game. Hyde replaced Madin with Ben Obong, who injected some life up front, and later Chris Young with Tom Brookes who took it badly as he walked straight off to the dressing room as Madin had done before him. Not the spirit we are looking for at a time of need. Disaster struck on 72 minutes as a hopeful free kick by Eddie Hussin drifted in at the far post with nobody getting a touch. Very similar to Nolo's goal against Marine at Hyde two weeks ago. Still time for the Tigers to come close, but when an opening appeared, Mr Ireland looked away. It was that sort of game on a firm bouncy surface, but when you are at the bottom, you need points and there just wasn't enough urgency on the day. Nolan was superb as were Filson and Crookes at the back. As usual Felgate produced good saves when he needed to, but overall a game to forget. At least eight wins are still needed, but now only fourteen games left. Relegation is a real threat as we just didn't pick up enough points against average teams. We need three points against Burscough for starters as a minimum. Anything less and we need to be reaching for the map as we will be visiting new places next season. Let's hope not! |