Soggy night in Southport down to Daz
EVERY silver lining has a black cloud and Darren Stephenson’s opening goal of the season condemns us all to a wet Wednesday night in Southport!
I’m pleased for the lad; he’s had a torrid four months, after promising so much in pre-season things haven’t exactly gone to plan but, fingers crossed Darren should take some confidence and get his season back on track.
Southport look like they’ve done just that. Since the 6-0 drubbing we gave them back at the beginning of September they’ve changed manager and brought in a whole host of new players, there were seven changes from that team that took to the pitch on Saturday, including the much travelled John Paul Kissock and Jason Gilchrist, who just loves to score against us judging by the times he does it!
But it was County who started the better and it wasn’t any surprise when the first goal arrived.
After a bit of penalty area ping-pong the ball fell to Bohan Dixon who calmly stroked the ball home from the edge of the area to send us into, albeit short lived, delirium.
Southport hit back almost immediately when Scott Duxbury was turned in knots and allowed the cross into the box for an easy equaliser.
We had two great shouts for a penalty but the referee made his own rules up and waved them both away.
I must give a brief mention to Sam Walker, subbed in the first half again; he wasn’t the worst player in a blue shirt by a long way.
The second half was much like the first with the exception that we couldn’t score, the Sandgrounders did and again Scott Duxbury was left floundering as he was again second best as the ball was crossed and Gilchrist got his goal.
Another individual who needs a special mention is Andrew White, the visitor’s number 3 who walked “onto” the pitch for treatment.
I don’t know who was the softer, him or the referee for allowing him to do it, pathetic the pair of them.
From then on though it was mostly one way traffic as County applied some pressure and after recent weeks it was no surprise that we scored in the dying minutes, Dan Cowan and Kallum Mantack combined to bring the ball down the right before the ball was neatly turned in by the hero of the day Darren Stephenson.
We still had time for one last effort as the ball came through a melee of legs only to be cleared off the line deep into added time.
So, 2-2 and a mid week trip to the Merseyrail Community Stadium or Haig Road if you prefer.