Market Drayton v Bamber Bridge

Market Drayton Town manager Simon Line is hoping his side don’t suffer an FA Trophy hangover tomorrow.

Police were called to control a group of rowdy, booze laden Bamber Bridge supporters at Greenfields on Saturday, when a disputed second half penalty earned the visitors a replay.

“It was all pretty dire,” Line admitted. “Our worst performance of the season by far.

“We had plenty of excuses – several of our players were not too well with a tummy bug and the wind, rain and greasy pitch made good football difficult.

“But the truth of the matter is that we just didn’t get out of first gear. We looked flat from start to finish and never really gave them much to worry about.”

A disputed penalty from Phil Eastwood on 64 minutes earned Bamber Bridge the right to a replay when Line says he will be making changes.

“There will certainly be some different faces in the team that drew on Saturday,” he said.

There were doubts about the penalty – given when Drayton’s Grant Goodhead and Bridge’s Ashley Dunn collided in mid-air going for Eastwood’s cross – but the result was about right.

Neither side could find any sort of form in a mistake-littered, tough, yet strangely passionless cup tie, although Drayton missed two good chances before Tom Ward put them ahead in the 44th minute with a well taken shot.

Apart from a hectic melee in the Bridge penalty area, when Ward and Duncan Horler got bogged down with goalkeeper Mike Hale and a group of defenders little more than a metre from their target, Town rarely troubled the opposition.

Martyn Davies fired one wide after the break and Tom Rogers’s running posed some problems but real goal threats were rare – and that applied to Bamber Bridge too.

The put together some promising attacks in the first half but the end product was normally one pass too many, playing into the hand’s of Drayton’s rearguard.

After police had shepherded the Bamber Bridge fans back to their bus, which was given a patrol car escort out of town, Drayton chairman Alex Mutch, who had confronted the group single handed while telling them to leave, praised the club’s stewards.

“They were brilliant dealing with what was a totally unexpected problem,” he said.

“The police let the group stay in one corner of the ground rather than evict them to go into the town and we fully understand their reasons for doing that.”