Shot in the neck for unbeaten run

Northampton Town 0-3 Aldershot Town
League Two
Friday, February 13th 2010


In one foul swoop, one disastrous night at Sixfields, the unbeaten run came to a grinding halt in the most emphatic of ways. Aldershot came to town knowing that a win would take them back above the Cobblers and win they did against a team playing with ten men for eighty minutes following the early sending off of Kevin Thornton, our newest breath of life to what was a floundering season.

This was a night that had expectation back at Sixfields after the 4-0 midweek win over Accrington Stanley and it was almost inevitable that with a muchly improved attendance we would fall to a first defeat in twelve games. We only have to hope that this one doesn’t get to the players and hurt them badly...it’s a soul destroying defeat that ended with confusion at the back with a backpass from Dean Beckwith and a slip from Chris Dunn summing up the night to let in Marvin Morgan to score his second of the game. We must pray that this doesn’t affect either players’ growing confidence from the past couple of weeks.

Morgan had already left his mark on the game when he headed home the first goal just seconds after Thornton had been shown his marching orders. That set the tone for the rest of the half with bookings aplenty but the visitors were still in front in terms of goals and players as we reached the break.

Sammo made a double change at half-time to reshuffle the pack and the introduction of Liam Davis and Stephen O’Flynn briefly managed to get us a foothold back into the game. Luke Guttridge hit a good effort early in the half that Stephen Henderson in the Shots goal did well to palm away before Davis set up the midfielder again with a good cross that Guttridge headed wide.

But it was a break away goal that ended any hope of a recovery for the Cobblers as Aldershot substitute Kirk Hudson found space to run clear and finish well past Dunn. The life was sucked out of the Cobblers and a third soon followed in the unfortunate circumstances for Dunn, who has been outstanding for the last couple of months.
That goes for all of the players, in fact. This can’t get us down. We have to pay tribute to the players for this run...eleven games without defeat in a row in any league is impressive and should be commended. If we were in the Premier League it would be talked about every week in the media but because of a poor start meaning that the points gained went only to clawing our way back up the table, it went somewhat unnoticed.

So let’s congratulate Sammo and the lads on a fine run and hope with all hope that we can go and get something from a tough looking game at Crewe next weekend. Keep the faith...this can still be done!