Goole keeper Craig Parry denies Market Drayton Town's Tom Rogers a late equaliser.
Former Shrewsbury Town striker Andy Cooke dropped in on Market Drayton Town’s match with Goole, stood behind the goal in studied isolation from club officials for about an hour or so and left early — lucky man, writes TERRY MORRIS.
Sadly, his visit, two days after discussing the club’s managerial vacancy with chairman Alex Mutch, coincided with probably Town’s worst UniBond League encounter at Greenfields this season.
Goole, who have had to shuffle their playing staff almost as violently as Town in the last few months, were never going to be the most artistic of visitors.
Recently appointed manager Carl Rose fielded only two of the players who started the season.
And with Town also forced to make extensive changes, both positional and in personnel, it was pretty grim fare for the alarmingly few fans who braved the elements.
Arguably the greatest entertainment they had was the sending off of Town’s Gary Anslow and Goole’s Chris Fawals for picking up two bookings each, four further bookings for Town’s Paul Bowyer, Stuart Timmis, Jason Francis and Paul McMullen and the poor performance of referee Mr M Howes.
Perhaps his gravest miscalculation was to yellow card Town’s Bowyer very early on for what was clearly a sending off offence against the best player on view, James Ghailchem a fast, nimble, nuggety little winger.
From there, it just got out of hand as the players of both sides tried to run the game. On three occasions groups squared up with Mr Howes struggling to contain the flashpoint.
Anslow was an unlucky victim of the mayhem, being sent off on 70 minutes for a soft second, yellow while others were escaping straight reds and Fawals probably felt hard done by too, picking up his second booking for kicking the ball away,
As for the football, Drayton played most of what there was and had three good first half opportunities to settle their nerves,
All fell to the left flank combination of David Howells and Bowyer. Keeper Craig Parry made fine saves from both and was then saved himself when an unlucky bounce denied Howells a simple header.
Goole’s Ashley Worsfold, on the other hand, saw his hopeful ninth minute header rom the edge of the area loop up and drop into the top corner of Andrew Pryce’s goal.
Defender James Dudgeon had even greater good fortune when he made it 2-0 on 75 minutes, shooting through a crowd of players.
Town could not complain too much for an even greater gift came their way on 90 minutes, keeper Parry pushing McMullen’s shot into his own net. Sadly, he made amends in added time by superbly denying sub Tom Rogers an equaliser.
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