Blind faith in Dugdale pays off for Bentley
MORECAMBE boss Jim Bentley hailed Adam Dugdale after revealing the defender was unable to see properly just hours before his side’s victory over Notts County.
Dugdale was taken to Lancaster hospital at 11:30am on Saturday morning having had trouble with his vision following a clash of heads last week.
He needed a dye injected into his eye to help him restore some of his sight and was only cleared to play at 1:30pm.
But he then produced an excellent performance to delight the manager, who commended his bravery.
“I thought Adam was absolutely superb,” he said.
“Right up to midday he couldn’t see out of his eyes. He had a nasty bang last week which sliced his eyeball open.
“He has trained OK, but it was getting worse.
“He had to go and see a specialist at 11:30am just to make sure he was okay.
“There was a dye put in his eye and it takes one to four hours to wear off so we didn’t know if he was going to be fit.
“But he was desperate to play, which shows you his desire. I singled him out because he came to me at 1:30am with 50 per cent vision in his eye.
“He battled on superbly against two very good centre forwards.”
All Dugdale could see in the opening stages of this contest was a wave of black and white shirts streaming towards him as
the visitors started brightly and could have been 2-0 up inside five minutes.
But Alan Goodall made them pay for their profligacy with a terrific drive from 20 yards.
Jon Stead then crashed a shot against the post as the visitors continued to create good chances before Genaro Snijders crashed in a superb volley from 25 yards.
At the start of the second-half, Notts looked likely to go in front until Paul Mullin cut in from the left to drill in from long range.
It broke the wave of Notts pressure and from then on there was only going to be one winner.
Alex Kenyon then made it 3-1 with a finish at the near post and the win was wrapped up in style late on when Jamie Devitt timed his run to perfection to slot past Roy Carroll.
It meant Notts have now not won in their last four league games and boss Ricardo Moniz was not amused.
“It was the same scenario as Oxford,” he said.
“Nothing is wrong going forward, but then out of nothing they go and score. It was something we had warned of before the game, but people are not listening.
“We are not aggressive enough. It looks awful at the moment and it’s my task to stay calm and analyse the problems. I’ve got to give the players help.”