Simon Martin in action at Kettering
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A season rich in promise for St Albans City plummeted to astonishing depths at Rockingham Road on Tuesday night as Conference North side Kettering Town handed out a comprehensive beating before the Saints pushed the self-destruct button when having a remarkable three players dismissed within eleven minutes to re-open fears of the FA invoking a suspended £5,000 fine for poor discipline last season.
With this 3rd Qualifying Round FA Cup replay already well and truly decided the march to catch the early bus home was started by substitute Olewale Ojelabi who received a straight red card on 74 minutes – just ten minutes into his debut – for bringing down Christian Moore, and was followed eleven minutes later by club captain Scott Cousins for an ugly two-footed lunge on Wayne Diuk with Patrick Ada joining the procession with his second yellow card after a frank exchange of views with Poppies defender Craig McIlwain during a hideous 18-man melee.
Despite the remarkable scenes in the dying minutes of the game, to label this a dirty or even ill-tempered affair would be way off the mark. As had been hinted for much of Saturday’s encounter at Clarence Park, Kettering were much the better side and richly deserved their victory.
On an unseasonably warm evening both sides showed one change from the first meeting, City brought in Dean Cracknell for the suspended and highly influential Nick Roddis while the Poppies replaced former Saint Junior McDougald with Jamie Paterson.
Kettering were soon onto the offensive, within nine minutes Andy Hall and James Gould had both tested Paul Bastock with crisp efforts while Moore flashed the ball across the face of the goal.
City did engineer a couple of chances of their own, a Chris Seeby header easily saved by Mark Osborn being the nearest they came to a goal, and were enjoying their best spell of the half when Kettering took the lead on 23 minutes. A good build up almost petered out when Ollie Burgess overhit his cross but when Gould returned the ball to the middle the incoming Burgess was on hand to drill it high into Bastock’s goal.
Two minutes later the tie was effectively over as Gould latched onto Matt Hann’s weak headed back pass and went wide of Bastock before scoring his first goal of the season. A snap shot comfortably over the top by Simon Martin was all Kettering allowed City during the reminder of the half while Bastock was kept busy; a save from Moore being the pick of his opening 45 minutes efforts.
But any hope of a City fightback went within three minutes of the restart when Ada’s rash tackle on Moore went unpunished mainly because the ball rolled conveniently into the path of Burgess who beat Bastock with an excellent low drive from 20 yards.
Three minutes later City’s night really did start to fall apart as Lee Clarke was removed on a stretcher with a nasty ankle injury. Kettering, however, showed no mercy with Paterson going close before McIlwain, on 69 minutes, headed down a Hall corner for Burgess to complete his hat trick from close in at the second attempt.
Bastock made an excellent save from Burgess’ fierce shot following the free kick awarded after Ojelabi was dismissed for bringing down Moore.
Kettering pressed for more but once City had also lost Cousins and Ada they launched a bizarre blitz on the home goal with Tom Davis and Hann coming closest to reduced the substantial arrears.
Given that City lost 9-1 and 6-1 during their only two previous FA Cup ties at Rockingham Road then perhaps it wasn’t such a bad night after all.
Match report by Dave Tavener. Kindly supplied by The St Albans Observer. |
