ACE KEEPER COUSINS IS THE FLEET GOAL HERO
EBBSFLEET United goalkeeper Mark Cousins scored a stoppage time equaliser to deny York City an important three points.
Cousins popped up to bag his first ever professional goal, hammering home a header in the 95th minute to cancel out Lenell John-Lewis’ early opener.
It earned his side a precious point in the battle to beat the drop and left York boss Neal Ardley unhappy with referee John Mulligan.
Ardley said: “Part of me feels for the lads because they’ve done 95 minutes of graft work, putting everything in to try and keep the clean sheet to win the game. Part of me obviously feels aggrieved.
“When a player runs off and grabs the ball, and then hands it to your player, that should tell the ref everything that you need to know.
“Regardless of what the ref has got confused with, he’s made that decision, there is no linesman there or fourth official.
“When their man runs and grabs the ball and hands it back to our player, it needs a little bit of common sense.
“We have to take it, we’ve got another game in three days that’s going to be extremely tough, so we’ve got to make sure that mentally, we get over the disappointment of this and get over that one.”
Ardley will have been pleased at his side’s start with Ryan Fallowfield’s long ball being helped on by defender Will Smith, with John-Lewis in a primal position to shift the ball into the bottom left corner.
Ebbsfleet were aggrieved themselves at the goal with Smith allegedly pushing his marker to the ground in order to find John-Lewis.
The visitors responded with a chance for Toby Edser, who somehow rifled an effort over George Sykes-Kenworthy’s crossbar from close range.
Ouss Cisse followed suit when meeting Greg Cundle’s low cross in a similar position to Edser, but his goalbound effort was heroically blocked and cleared by substitute defender Tyler Cordner.
Dom Poleon has been a constant for Ebbsfleet in recent years, and forced former Bradford City teammate Sykes-Kenworthy into a brilliant save to parry wide.
Former Reading striker Dominic Samuel had a chance on the brink of half-time after some silky footwork allowed the attacker to find space on the edge of the box, but his strike frustratingly fell wide. The second half lacked the same amount of action as the first with Samuel having an opportunity that was dealt with by Sykes-Kenworthy.
City didn’t generate the same shots as Ebbsfleet but had several nearly moments, with a number of crosses lacking a red shirt.
But it was Ebbsfleet who would spend Christmas the happier, with a late corner seeing Cousins bully the ball over the line.
On the whistle, both sides surrounded referee Mulligan with a red card reportedly shown.