Decided to head up to the Ray Mac for the visit of former league club Chester City this evening. Like Salisbury, Chester have been deducted points for financial reasons this season although their offences meant that they eventually started the season with 25 points to win before they hit the 0 point mark. It was also an opportunity to see Greg Blundell – infamous from the post match pub conversations with his near namesake Gary Blundell.
The first half didn’t offer too much in the way of excitement until James Bittner decided to spice things up by hitting his clearances short. After the first one went out for a throw, he decided to boot it up the pitch again to allow some time to get back in goal before the throw could be taken. This didn’t go down too well with the visitors and he was lucky just to get a warning from the referee. The second one allowed Blundell to bring the ball forward but he was dispossessed by the defence close to the penalty area and was unlucky not to get a freekick.
The game then turned into an end to end encounter – Salisbury hit a freekick into the wall, Chester’s Luke Chadwick (ex Everton) almost got onto a cross, Flood had a shot just wide for Salisbury and Chadwick ran in after a defensive slip but couldn’t beat Bittner at the near post from the acute angle. In the 30th minute it looked like Salisbury would score from a great header which looked to be going into the top centre of the goal until the Chester keeper appeared from nowhere and tipped the ball over the bar.
There were a few more half chances for both teams but nothing to really test the goalkeepers. Tubbs was cynically fouled on the halfway line as he was beginning to start a run on the Chester defence and Clohessy put a shot out of the ground following some good build up play down the left side.
The second half was a similar story. Both teams were creating half chances and Salisbury came very close to a goal in the 60th minute when Tubbs took the ball past the keeper from a cross but took too long to take a shot and the ball was cleared off the line by a defender’s header. One key chance to the second half was the way that the Salisbury team were spreading the play and using both wings to try and break down the Chester defence. The players didn’t have the confidence to take on the defence though and the balls were being hit into the area were hit forward rather than backwards which made it easy for the Chester keeper.
Given the distances involved and the costs of segregation there were a few Chester supporters to our left and one of them was becoming more and more agitated as his team weren’t performing as expected. Sinclair and Tubbs both had shots just wide and it only seemed like a matter of time before Salisbury would score. In the 78th minute there was a goal but it was very much against the run of play. Another long kick from the Chester keeper was headed to the right and found Blundell. He played the ball into Wilkinson who put a shot from the right side of the box past Bittner and into the back of the net.
Salisbury were not behind for long. Four minutes later they won a corner and the ball was played high into the goalmouth. The Chester keeper went up with Danny Webb and didn’t collect the ball, allowing Sean Clohessy to bundle it into the net. Matt Tubbs tried to take the ball out of the net to get the game restarted again and in turn provoked a couple of Chester players which led to a nasty altercation. The Chester keeper hurt himself in the process of trying to clear the ball and had to be substituted which led to 6 minutes of injury time. In the final seconds it looked like Salisbury had won the game when Darryl Clarke shot past the keeper but this final kick of the game was disallowed for offside.
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