26-03-18 – Preview – Alfreton Town Vs Harriers

This re-arranged game away at Alfreton Town comes quickly on the heels of Saturdays laughable game against Salford City at Aggborough. How any, so called, professional team can give away a commanding four goal lead beggars belief. Then to give them all four of their goals in the last ten minutes makes you wonder what was going through the minds of those, so called, professional full time and fully fit players as our shoddy defence was breeched time and time again.

On Saturday we were 4-0 up and cruising to an easy win against the top of the table side but as usual we took our foot off the pedal and opted to pass the ball around without actually doing anything with it. We allowed City to bully us into giving the ball away and we had no one on the field of play strong enough to stand up to it. Admittedly we had a poor referee, again, who failed miserably in his duty by not sending Tom Walker off for a vicious assault on James McQuilkin but you can’t blame the ref for our poor end of game management.

No doubt there will have been a dressing room inquiry at the end of the game, as there has been on social media all weekend, but this is not the first time we have thrown away the points in the dying stages of the game. Will this end of game collapse happen again? it shouldn’t if the players have taken all the criticism on board but no doubt it will. We don’t seem to have a strong enough backbone to deal with this kind of event as shown at Gainsborough a few weeks ago and at home to Darlington last November.

So it’s now onto Alfreton and hopefully we’ll see a face saving win.

In recent seasons we have come away from the Impact Arena with only one point from a possible nine and the last time we won a game there was in the FA Trophy in November 2012. Last season it was a 3-3 draw that gave us the point and that came about after going 3-0 down before halftime. It was only a rollicking at the break that saw us claw the game back with goals from Andre Brown and Liam Truslove.

Alfreton are safely positioned in sixteenth place in the table, winning some and losing some. On Saturday they went to improving Southport and won 3-1 with goals from Tom Allan, Brendon Daniels and Nyall Bell but during the week they lost at home, 1-0, to struggling AFC Telford Utd.

Playing for them is former Harrier Cieron Keane. He left us by mutual consent less than a month after the season started in August last year and his time here at Aggborough wasn’t blessed with praise and no doubt he’ll want to prove a point tomorrow. 

We have two former Town players with us and one of them, Dan Bradley, scored his first two goals for us this season in the 2-1 win at home to York City and then added another against Salford. The other former Alfreton player is Joe Ironside. He’s scored a few more than Bradley and hopefully he’ll score a few more tomorrow.

We’ll probably be without James O’Connor and Elton N’Gwatala again but hopefully the former will be back soon to give us that missing backbone. Liam Truslove could also be out injured too.

Our trip to the Impact will be the last of our more local games with our remaining four away games coming at far flung venues. Boston Utd this coming Good Friday is followed by even longer trips to the North East to face Blyth Spartans, Spennymoor Town and North Ferriby Utd. All games that we must start to win if we hope to finish as high as possible. First though we have to pick up only our fifth away win of the season at Alfie.

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Hall, N Vaughan, Palmer, Taylor, Horsfall, O’Connor, Digie, L Vaughan, Pearson, Croasdale, Truslove, Weeks, Austin, Bradley, A Brown, Sonupè, McQuilkin, N’Gwatala, Ironside, Waring.

Alfreton Town from:

Elliott, Johansson, Allan, Shiels, Topliss, Wood, Keane, Wagner,  Green, Disley, Marshall, Jennings, Platt, Daniels, Evans, Brough, Everington, Baxendale, Westcarr, Sharp, Johnson, Bell.

Talk about the game here and phone the Harriers Hotline on 01905 577 777 after the game too.

Links to Alfreton Town websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here