No denying Hatters spot in the final
I HAVE to admit that I went through a roller coaster of emotions during the week leading up to the second leg of our play-off against Salford.
From the lows of not being able to see where our goals would come from to the highs of seeing us dominate the game, there were moments of worry, moments of doubt and moments of unbridled surety that we’d win in style.
In the end we witnessed a truly great day in County’s history and a whole host of County heroes.
Our talisman, Paddy Madden, was back from injury to lead the team out.
His presence lifted a packed Edgeley Park and gave us all a boost and there were several more on the bench Will Collar, Antoni Sarcevic, along with Ryan Croasdale, Myles Hippolyte and Jack Stretton gave us the strongest subs bench we’ve seen in years.
It seemed obvious that the tactic was let the starting 11 run the visitors ragged then bring on more pace and quality to see off the visitors.
We started much better than we did in the first leg, we took the game to Salford and applied pressure from the first minute, the fact that we didn’t have anything to show for it was the ridiculous performance of the referee, Ben Toner.
He booked seven of our players without a serious foul being made all game. He was causing my heart no end of worry!
Thankfully there was nothing to worry about in the 68th minute when Tanto rose “salmon like” to head home.
The noise from all four sides of the ground was possibly the loudest I’ve heard since Bolton.
We were dominant now, running Salford ragged.
They resorted to some hectic defending and the hope of a quick break but the 90 minutes were over and we entered extra time.
We were still in control when on the 112th minute Salford broke and a loose shot took a wicked deflection to loop past a helpless Ben Hinchliffe.
Salford had the upper hand, but County were not going to be outdone.
Just three minutes later Jack Stretton headed in to send the County faithful in to raptures and into a penalty shoot-out.
In these situations there is always a hero and a villain, in this shoot out the hero wore a County shirt.
Ben Hinchliffe saved two penalties and where as Sarce scored the winning spot-kick it was Ben who took the plaudits and sends us to Wembley where we’ll meet Carlisle. It’s going to be memorable.