Blue Square Premier - 25th March 2008
At KitKat Crescent - Att 1,941 (69 Northwich)
Report
Positives were hard to extract from City's televised draw with
Northwich Victoria. Richard
Brodie stood out with a goal and his general hard work and
attitude, but it was difficult to force a smile after a drab
performance.
Brodie's goal capped a fairly bright opening, although that
only came after Darryn Stamp had the ball in the net for the
Vics, though a foul on Tom
Evans ruled that irrelevant. Some patient build-up play
saw Martyn Woolford
take it to the bye-line and cut it back to Mark
Robinson. He swung in a teasing first-time cross, Onome
Sodje turned it on to Brodie who tucked it past a flailing
Ben Connett.
Brodie used his frame to work an opening for a shot, but his
effort was blocked and the subsequent corner dealt with by the
Cheshire defence. Time and again, Brodie's best efforts were
thwarted and few of his team-mates could match his endeavours.
His shot to the near post needed a smart save from Connett,
but City wouldn't come as close again.
Stamp almost caused massive embarrassment to the home side as
he fired Evans' poor clearance straight back, but it drifted
just wide of the goal, but from there on the best chances would
fall to Northwich. Indeed, the biggest surprise was the fact
that it took them until 28 minutes into the second half to draw
level. The ball was only half-cleared as the Vics piled forward
and Michael Byrne took it with his back to goal, spun and shot
across Evans and inside the far post.
City, meanwhile, were struggling to retain possession and string
any sort of passing movement together. Northwich played with
a back three of a trio of monstrous centre-halves who snuffed
out most of what City managed to get going. Danny Meadowcroft,
the more impressive of that defensive unit, cleared the danger
when Brodie almost fed Sodje in. Byrne had another shot after
substitute Michael Carr teed him up, but it was way over. City
had switched to a 4-3-3 by this stage, though the changes had
little impact with the forwards struggling to hold it up. On
the rare occasions it got up front, it came back pretty swiftly
and opened City up to the counter-attack. Matt Crowell brought
out the best of Tom Evans as his goal-bound curling effort saw
the City stopper pull off an impressive looking Hollywood save,
though he was well beaten by Byrne's downward volley that went
just wide of the far post. A miserable night was ended by Aaron
Burns's shot into the side netting which momentarily had the
travelling Vics support believing they'd snatched the win.
It's a mystery how they didn't. City were way off their game
and were probably fortunate to gain a point. Single points aren't
enough if that play-off hope is to become any more realistic,
even if not losing maintains the long unbeaten run at home.
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