Wow! Crewe have just done a Crewe – on Stevenage!!
You can’t tell me that this team lacks spirit – what a finish, the very least we deserved!
We started well, had a lot of the ball without really creating much. A few aimless passes from both teams but we had the edge .........when all of a sudden, 15 mins or so in, they break, there’s a cute lobbed pass over George’s head to their 22 and he slots it in. Ben didn’t really have a prayer if I’m honest. That seemed to knock the stuffing out of us and the remainder of the 1st half was all effort but little quality from either side.
2nd half and another bright start .......only for all that to be completely undone by a mistake. George seems to have the ball covered deep in our half in the right back spot only to lose possession. He’s completely outpaced across the bi-line, and the resulting cross is tapped in. 2-0 – but how? What chances they were creating they were converting. It was at this point I turned to my mate and said I’ll take a draw. Moments later I confess I said I’ll even take a 2-1.
Then the substitutions were made. Lowery is an easy target for many because of the way he plays. In the 1st half he was afforded time and space so that he could play the ball around. In the 2nd, you could clearly see a seed change – they were trying to shut us down. Removing Lowery was probably the right choice, suddenly this wasn’t the game for him, although I was surprised McKirdy was his replacement. But it was the substitutions that made all the difference – McKirdy less so, it was the industry of Daggers and Kirk that gave us the extra impetus, but not before Perry hit a screamer from 20 yards with about 10 to go. He seems to be making a habit of this. From then on it was one-way traffic. Their keeper pulled off a stunning save to deny a Nolan header.
Credit to the ref at this point because he seemed to be wise to their time-wasting tactics (not least the apparent removal of the ball boys when they were 2 up!) by adding on a generous amount of added time. We were hoping for 5 mins – we got 7!!! But we needed all of that as in the final minute, Harry’s cross was met expertly by the head of Charlie Kirk. The away end erupted – and all the coaching staff invaded the pitch. It was just like we had won promotion! If anyone can recall the away game at Torquay in 2012 when Powell grabbed a late equaliser, it was a bit like that!! Excellent reward for our persistence and as I said at the top, the least we deserved.