Pre-season friendly
Edge Hill
Thursday, 12th August 2004, 7.45pm
Leaving this game and travelling home you just wondered how on earth did Gresley lose this match. They made so many chances that by half time they should have been out of site of Stapenhill.
Still, it's not all about creating chances it's about sticking them away and that's what Stapenhill did to their credit. They had a barely a handful of chances and scored two.
Again the goals were soft ones given away by two defensive lapses that must be giving manager Gary Norton nightmares as the first league game appears on the near horizon.
As was expected Gresley made all the running for the majority of the first half and went close on 14 minutes when Justin Rowe laid the ball back to Jon Branch but his shot went just over the bar.
Six minutes later another chance when Aaron O'Connor made a great run down the right before putting the ball into Rowe's path but Rich Critchlow was equal to the shot and blocked it at the near post.
On 25 minutes a fine run by Paul Cambell down the left resulted in a superb ball across the face of goal just evading a touch from O'Connor running in on goal.
The Stapenhill defence were also trying to give their visitor's the lead when a defender almost headed home a Campbell cross but to his relief the ball went narrowly wide of the post.
Branch and Liam Hebberd combined well to make the next chance on 36 minutes but the final shot again flew just over the bar.
Stapenhill were defending for all their worth as shots rained in on the home goal but a combination of stout defending and resolute keeping amazingly kept the score at nil-nil at the interval.
Gresley came out for the second period as strong as they'd finished the first and within a minute of the re-start O'Connor hit the post with a powerful shot that had substitute Swans keeper Andy Beeston beaten.
On 48 minutes the Gresley pressure paid off. A fine cross from Richard Wardle found O'Connor who made no mistake hammering the ball home and he could have doubled the advantage a minute later but a fine save from Beetson with his leags denied him.
The travelling Gresley fans were now expecting an avalanche of goals from their side but, as they say, football's a funny old game!
On one of their rare ventures forward Stapenhill's Stephen Marshall showed they were not going to lie down and be steamrollered into defeat when he collected the ball and fired in a long-range volley that rattled the Gresley cross bar.
This encouraged the home side and on 58 minutes they drew level when Marshall capitalised on a poor clearance from Wardle to knock the ball home.
Things got even worse for the Moatmen just five minutes later when a moment of hesitation in the Gresley defence allowed Greg Smith to poke the ball home.
Gresley went once more on the attack and gave Beeston a very busy period. First he had to block a shot from Jamie Barrett and then save an Andy Simpson header all in the space of two minutes.
On 70 minutes Gresley should have been on equal terms when O'Connor was needlessly brought down in the area. Waving Wardle away, O'Connor chose to take the kick himself but a superb save from Beeston, denied him his second goal.
Stapenhill's goal came under siege for the final 15 minutes. Barrett was unlucky to see his shot hit the post and Matt Smith put a header just wide and O'Connor, after some very good work, disappointingly put his shot over the bar.
Manager's View
"It's a bitter pill to swallow coming back to my old club and losing!
In fairness to them we played them off the park in the first half and it's been the lack of a final ball or taking an extra pass.
"First half we played some great football and could well have been two or three up but credit to Paul and what he's got his team doing. They worked very, very hard defensively and it was a case of backs-to-the wall for them in the second half. We went ahead and we had two or three other chances to extend that. But they dug in and got two decent goals when we were caught napping.
"The theme of pre-season carried on â€" sloppy at the back but having said that we created a lot of chances and on another day could have won the game by a significant amount.
"They defended well and were difficult to break down but I felt we caused our own problems defensively tonight. I was hoping for a clean sheet so it's very frustrating and I've still got concerns in that area.
"Going forward, as good as we look, you can't keep having that number of quality above average chances and coming away only scoring the odd goal so we've a lot of work to do and not much time in which to do it."
