PINN-POINT FINISHING
MITCH Pinnock’s late goal kept up Dover’s promotion charge and pushed Guiseley further into the relegation mire.
The midfielder fired through the body of visiting keeper Luke Coddington with just two minutes left on the clock.
Lions boss Paul Cox still believes his side can pull off the Great Escape, in spite of the nine points separating his side from fifth-bottom Barrow.
“If you can’t see out the 90 minutes, you won’t get the desired result,” said a frustrated Cox. “It is all about game management to see out these types of games late on, but instead we wasted energy on working hard.
“Overall we did well over the 90 minutes. We added some quality last week and now we have 17 games left for them all to gel and give us a chance of achieving our goal of safety.”
And it looked like one of those new faces, former Wycombe striker Dayle Southwell, had rescued a precious point for the West Yorkshire side after his stunning second-half free-kick cancelled out Mitch Brundle’s early scorcher.
Pinnock can count himself unlucky to not have scored more on the day, firstly striking the bar with a delightful effort from the edge of the area.
But Brundle showed his teammate how it should be done just moments later, finding the top corner from 30 yards after Anthony Jeffrey laid the ball into the skipper’s path.
Home stopper Mitch Walker tipped away strikes from McFadzean and James Roberts, with Giancarlo Gallifuoco nodding just wide at the other end in an entertaining affair.
Brundle almost started the second half as he did the first, blasting a long range shot narrowly wide.
Pinnock thought he had restored Dover’s lead within minutes of Southwell’s leveller, only for his side to be denied by a controversial off-side decision after Ryan Bird was adjudged to have wandered into Coddington’s line of sight.
Not to be deterred, Pinnock then blazed a free-kick just wide of the post and he finally made the breakthrough after collecting Femi Ilesanmi’s pass and smashing past a helpless Coddington.
Ilesanmi almost wrapped up the points in an injurytime counter attack, however the Guiseley defence were just able to see out his lungbusting run.
And Athletic first team coach Mark Newson was just relieved to see his side gain a valuable three points.
“We scored two that were disallowed, but we showed great character in tricky conditions to get the result we wanted,” he said.
“The boys are really pleased with a well-earned three points.”