Bitter pill to swallow

Up to that point, we had more than matched our visitors, drawing level in the first half after Owen Howe put Salisbury 1-0 up with a fine direct free kick scored by man of the match Matt Britton. Shaun pulled off a stupendous point-blank save earlier in the half and at the other end Alex Lambert was unlucky not to score from an acrobatic half-volley.

So it was level-pegging at half time and for the next 20 minutes or so the Larks had the edge. Joe Tumelty hit the side netting and Cory Simpson was a thorn in the side of the Salisbury defence with his quick runs down the wing. Then with only 12 minutes to play, disaster struck. Shaun was judged to have taken down Salisbury's Tom Whelan in his area and with a backdrop of raucous protests from their players and supporters the referee brandished his red card and gave the Whites a penalty.

Captain Matt Guy bravely donned the keeper's gloves and his first action was to distract Howe sufficiently to make him mis-kick his penalty strike onto the bar. Matt then went on to make a couple of saves as we defended in numbers, whilst Cory, Joe and Greg Peel continued to go in search of another equaliser. Sadly this never came, and Salisbury snatched a winner when a shot took a wicked deflection off Stuart Green. They then managed the remainder of the game in such a way as to preserve their lead.

The result was a bitter pill to swallow but the Larks should be proud of the way they took the game to their promotion-chasing opponents on a very heavy pitch.

Source Larkhall Athletic FC