Crawley 1 RDFC 0
Diamonds fell to one of their most embarrassing defeats ever, at the hands of a Crawley Town side that included a number of players only signed one or two days before the game - and with the remainder not being clear whether they would have a club to play for, and not having had anything like a full pre-season - even those who are full-time. Even the Crawley fans had been predicting big Rushden wins on their forum.
Despite a good pre-season, and boasts about the quality of the fitness training, it was the Crawley side that finished the stronger as they held onto their goal lead gifted to them by debutant goalkeeper Nicky Eyre, who had been plucked from rejection at Grays by Paul Hart and given the number 1 shirt.
The Broadfield stadium is a tidy affair, with clean and tidy facilities, and although many of the staff must be operating under threat of imminent redundancy, they still managed to produce a programme in under 24 hours that would put many to shame.
The only surprise in the diamonds line up was the inclusion of Dave Savage in the starting 11 – one wonders why he was given so little football during the friendlies if he was regarded as a starter for our first match.
The game started with the Diamonds kicking towards their travelling fans, but most of the action in the first 10 minutes was at the other end, before Paul Hart’s team realised that Crawley weren’t just going to lie down, and started playing. For most of the rest of the half it was all Rushden pressure, with plenty of space on the flanks for the two full-backs to use, and Dave Savage putting in a decent performance in the half, with a couple of good runs through the defence.
Good chances were spurned at a narrow angle by Chilli, LFW and Michael Rankine, and both Centre Backs had good chances to score from headers at one of the many corners. Perhaps the best attempt came from a corner move which saw Paul Watson have a great strike on goal which was cleared off the line by a defender. Other opportunities were thwarted by an over eager linesman giving a number of debateable offside decisions.
Crawley did have one further good chance towards the end of the half, with a two-on-two breakaway resulting in their striker only having Eyre to beat, but the goalie made a good close range save.
The half ended with Michael Rankine missing yet another good chance – with many not expecting to see him return for the second half, given the quality and quantity of strikers on the bench.
At half-time the old cliché about “needing a goal” was bandied around the terrace – but at that stage there was a generally positive feeling.
The second half started in a reasonably similar manner, with a good deal of Diamonds pressure but nothing to show for it – yet still there was no sign of a substitution from Hart to liven things up.
One bright moment was the felling of the lino by a sliding LFW – unfortunately it wasn’t the one we’d suffered in the first half.
With shades of Diamonds last away game – at Boston – Wayne Hatswell missing a clear cut chance to put Diamonds ahead, and then had a hand in them going behind. Nicky Eyre had been seen as a goalkeeper with good distribution, but with an hour gone this let him down badly. Firstly he put Glenn Wilson under great pressure by throwing the ball to him immediately a Crawley attack broke down, but when there were still a number of Crawley forwards near him. As Eyre rather fortunately got the ball back as Diamonds won a goal kick, Chris Hope clearly told him to slow things down – but he completely ignored this advice, and knocked the ball from the middle of the six yard box to Hatswell on the edge of the area. Hatswell realised he was under great pressure, but rather than stopping the ball before it reached the edge of the area (thus forcing a retake), he knocked it back to Eyre, who then, in a Turleyesqe moment, decided to consider his options whilst Ben Strevens descended upon him (Duane Darby-style). Sure enough, Eyre’s kick hit Strevens’ outstretched foot and bounced slowly into the unguarded net.
One might have thought this would be a sign for Diamonds to redouble their effort, or for the manager to make tactical substitutions – but, alas, neither happened until over 10 vital minutes had ticked by. Hart took the strange decision to take off LFW rather than the ineffective Rankine, bringing on Jackson and Berry for LFW and Chilli.
However, by this stage, the Diamonds improved fitness over the part-timers who hadn’t had a proper preseason would surely begin to show wouldn’t it ?? No – Crawley had much the better of the last quarter, and even when Hart finally took off Savage (who’d done nothing the entire half) and brought on Tomlin, there was no way back.
Tyrone Berry went close with a good header that was one of the first to go on target all game.
The final chance came when the Crawley goalie was penalised for carrying the ball outside of his area, but again the next in the repertoire of Paul Hart “cunning free kick plans” resulted in the inevitable.
Gary Mills left the pitch to applause from the Crawley fans, although he would have been justified in making an ironic wave to those Diamonds fans who gave him such abuse, as he ended up on the winning side.
Despite four minutes of injury time, RDFC never looked liked getting a goal, and those of us who’d thought our 30 months of misery following the Diamonds at a succession of away defeats might be coming to an end, now we are back in the Conference, had our illusion rapidly shattered.
A few of the Diamonds team had the decency to applaud the travelling fans at the end – Notably Hope, Tomlin and Berry, but too many abject performances like that (from team and Manager) will result in the numbers investing their hard-earned getting less and less.
Diamonds Team
Nicky Eyre (GK 1)
Glenn Wilson (RB 2) - Chris Hope (CH 5) - Wayne Hatswell (CH 6) - Paul Watson (LB 3)
Dave Savage (M 7) - Jon Ashton (M 4) - Marcus Kelly (M 11)
Daniel Chillingworth (F 10) - Leo Fortune-West (F 9) - Michael Rankine (F 8 )
On the bench were Simeon Jackson (F 12), Danny Crane (GK 13), Tom Shaw (M 18) Lee Tomlin (F 14) and Tyrone Berry (F 15); with Daniel Grainger (D/M 19), Andrew Rigby (M 17) and Greg Pearson (F 16) left out of the squad.
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