Harborough Town Reserves manager Tony Sansome:
“ON Chenecks Res 3 Harborough Town Res 4
I think any neutrals watching this game would have gone home content after being entertained. This was an end to end game, we settled the quickest and found ourselves ahead on 13 minutes, Alex Morris latching onto a short back pass and coolly beating the keeper. We had other opportunities but soon found ourselves level when the home side were first to react to a lose ball and was stronger in getting the ball over the line.
We were soon ahead again after some nice football cut Chenecks open, James Knowles playing a perfectly weighted pass to Morris who took his time and found Josh King who finished well to the right of the keeper. We saw it to half time ahead although I know Chenecks felt they should have had a penalty on 44, I probably agree too, although the striker had been going down easily all half which may have been why the ref didn’t give it. I know it will be a topic in Gav’s report though and I’m sure we’d have felt the same.
It was clear from the start of the second half that Chenecks were stepping it up and they threw the kitchen sink at us for the whole half and we needed the find some heroes to put their bodies on the line and thankfully we had them last night. We thought we had seen off the worst of the threat when they equalised with around 11 minutes, the lads didn’t show any disappointment though, they just dig in and we were ahead again four minutes later, sub Luke Hartley lashing in a great goal from the edge of the area through a crowd of bodies.
We thought we had just about seen the game through when the hosts scored again on 90 minutes, despite a great initial save from Ben Dearsley, their bench went wild as you can imagine, it goes without saying that it was Charlie Wixon who scored, he hasn’t played all season but we knew he’d be playing last night, the only way I’ll ever avoid him scoring against us is to sign him (tell me your terms big man); we gambled by throwing Alex Morris back on, he came off as he was feeling ill but the ref announced there was six minutes of injury time so we asked him to give us what he had left (I suddenly became a lover of roll on roll off subs) and in the 96th minute a great ball was played out of the middle by sub Hartley, and found Morris, his first touch was heavy but his pace meant he still had a chance to get there, he reached it at the same time as the keeper who knocked him off his stride and a penalty was awarded. Holland decided he wanted it, usually I’m not a lover of players deciding whose going to take the penalty but he was confident, and despite the keeper getting a hand to it, we were delighted to see the ball in the back of the net. The ref then blew his whistle and the win was ours.
Tough for Chenecks to take but we were obviously delighted, all 16 players performed admirably, this was a game we’d have lost earlier in the season but the young lads are getting a hang of adult football. I can’t really highlight any of them, except to just mention skipper Jordie Burke, who at 20 is probably the youngest captain in the league, but undeniably the best I’ve worked with.
Best of luck to Chenecks they are a really difficult side to play against. We now look forward to a home game against Daventry, who had a fantastic win against Deeping at the weekend .”
