08-03-24. Kidderminster Harriers Vs York City. Match preview

Preview: Phil Lench

The Harriers will have to pick themselves up and regroup for this game at home to York City tomorrow following that disappointing defeat at Woking FC on Tuesday evening. We’d taken the lead with a well taken Jack Lambert goal early doors and continued the remainder of the first half in the dominant position but after the break it all went tits up as our makeshift defence fell apart and allowed the hosts back in to score twice and pocket the points.

Both goals were very poor to concede from our point of view with the first a calamitous mistake from Christian Dibble to allow the ball to go between his splayed legs while the late second, a penalty, was a bad judgment from Nathaniel Knight-Percival in getting too close to the Woking striker and putting a hand on his back then see him dive to the floor and con the officials into awarding the spot kick. Dibble redeemed himself with a great stop but the ball fell kindly for the taker and he headed the ball home.

Phil Brown admitted after the game that he was to blame due to his team selection and he has to be praised for his honesty. Now he has to get it right for the visit of City tomorrow.

Sadly we’ll be without Shane Byrne for this and the remainder of the season after he received a fracture in his knee during the Woking game. Luckily we have a decent replacement in Regan Griffiths but it’s in other departments where we’ll struggle. Alex Penny missed the game with some kind of illness and, along with the un-availability of Matt Preston, we were forced to bring NKP back from injury too early.

Preston is due back any day soon but I can’t see us risking yet another unfit defender just back from injury but at least we’ll have Krystian Pearce back following the one match ban that kept him out of the Woking game. Sam Robinson is also getting close to a return but is a little longer away.

This game will be one of our two chances of a double in this league after we beat York in the second game of the season with our goal coming from their former striker Amari Morgan-Smith. He’ll be hoping to get back on the score sheet for this game too having gone six weeks without scoring. Hopefully it’ll be the winning goal. The other possible ‘double game’ is Wealdstone FC in a few weeks time.

Tomorrow we get our first double then? And it’s for you Shane Byrne…

Photo © KHFC

Referee: Mr Sam Mulhall. Cheshire

Talk about the game here

Links to York City websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here