St Albans City showed a greater will to battle their way out of trouble at Rockingham Road on Tuesday night but still extended their losing run to a sixth match when the second half dismissal of captain Derek Brown and two late goals nudged the Saints into the bottom three of the Premier Division.
With hopes of a place in the revamped Conference next season fading by the match City’s fight for survival in the Ryman League suffered a bitter blow on a chilly night in Northamptonshire when Brown, in the opinion of referee Mr Cann, was the last defender as he tussled Jason Turner to the ground thus collecting City’s third red card of the season.
It was a particularly tough setback as at the time City, after a dour first half, were staging a solid rearguard action in the face of sustained pressure from a Kettering Town side looking to end its own run of four successive league defeats.
But then, inside ten fateful minutes, City lost their central defensive pairing of Corey Campbell and Brown – through injury and a red card respectively - and saw Jason Turner claim his tenth goal of the season to open the scoring; nine minutes from time Garry Butterworth added a stupendous second.
City were minus Roger Willis and Chris Zoricich from Saturday’s game against Billericay with Steve Castle and Gary Wraight coming into the starting XI, and for the opening 45 minutes the latest line-up more than held its own during a scrappy affair of precious decent football. What half chances there were came City’s way with Michael Shinn and Miguel De Souza both going reasonably close while a cross from Scott Oakes saw Steve Watts and Poppies defender Brett Skelton both challenge for the ball that flew towards the top corner of the home goal before Mark Bunn conceded a corner with a brilliant save.
Town manager Kevin Wilson, previously with Bedford and Aylesbury already this season, sent on Paul Fewings for the start of the second half and with the wind now at their backs the Poppies were a different proposition. City keeper George Clark made excellent saves from Richard Graham and Fewings within ten minutes of the restart and then did well to divert the ball out for a corner at the feet Darren Lynch as Kettering penned City back deep in their own half.
But it all started to go wrong for City on 66 minutes when a long diagonal ball over the defence caught them square and once Turner went to ground with Brown in close pursuit there was little doubt as to what colour card was about to be brandished.
St Albans beat down the resultant free kick with Wraight completing the clearance but six minutes later Graham crossed from Wraight’s flank, the City right, for Turner to slide home the opening goal. On 81 minutes Kettering made certain of their first league win since New Years Day when Butterworth, from fully 35 yards, unleashed a glorious drive that was destined for the top right hand corner of Clark’s goal from the moment it left the England semi-professional internationals boot.
With five straight league defeats behind them this is now City’s worst run in the Isthmian League for 16 years while defeat at Braintree on Saturday would equal their run of seven consecutive reversals in all competitions endured during the 1990-91 season. The run of 14 successive league defeats chalked up during the 1973-74 season is still some way off in the distance.
Report by Dave Tavener |
