Hawkins Sports 1 (Birks pen, 41) Stone Dominoes 1 (Lindop, 35): Staffordshire County Senior League Div One, Wednesday 26th August
Stone Dominoes made the trip to Walsall to take on Hawkins Sports in their latest league fixture, but missed first-half chances meant they had to settle for just a point.
Shane Lindop had scored his third goal in as many games on the half-hour mark, but a Garth Birks penalty pegged back the visitors just before half time.
Dominoes made two changes from Saturday’s defeat and looked comfortable in possession in the early exchanges, but it was Hawkins who had the first opportunity. Garth Birks could only hit the wall with a free kick from the edge of the box.
The visitors were nearly ahead after 18 minutes when Shane Lindop’s effort rebounded off the keeper, and in the resulting scramble the ball was headed off the line and cleared to safety. Another chance came and went 5 minutes later when some good build up play ended with Tom Broadhurst firing over the crossbar with his left foot from 18 yards.
Stone pressure was rewarded just after the half hour mark as Lindop cut inside from the right and his swerving shot from 25 yards ended up in the top corner, giving the home goalkeeper no chance. The lead was nearly doubled 3 minutes later as some excellent link up play between Broadhurst and Chris Nellis saw the latter have his shot blocked from 14 yards resulting in just a corner.
With the precarious one goal advantage, Dominoes were made to rue missed chances to move further ahead as Jack Steele conceded a penalty when he was turned inside the area as half time approached. Birks was handed the responsibility and calmly placed the ball down the middle for the equaliser.
There was not much to shout about for either side in the second half as clear cut chances were few and far between. With the half starting slowly, the away side made a double change after 55 minutes in order to find a way to take the lead once more. Substitute Louis Farrow’s big opportunity maybe came before he could work his way into the game, as 5 minutes after coming on he found himself in behind the home defence, but could only shoot straight at the goalkeeper.
Hawkins were seeing less of the ball, and although a free kick on the edge of the box gave them an opportunity to test Craig Bould, the Stone goalkeeper watched the effort safely over his crossbar.
As the game was slowly moving towards a stalemate, Dominoes thought they should have had an opportunity to win it as Farrow looked to be bundled over inside the area; the referee disagreed and waved away the penalty shouts from the visiting players, as both sides had to settle for a point.
“It’s never a disaster to pick up a point away from home and I thought we were much better defensively,” said joint manager Kyle Adams. “That said, I felt we had enough chances in the first half to maybe take all three points and we need to be a little bit more clinical in front of goal, although the pleasing thing is that we are creating a lot of chances.”
[box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” ]Stone Dominoes: Bould (c), E.Adams (Byles 70), Thorp, James, Parkes, Steele, Kenny (Farrow 55), Hughes, Lindop, Nellis (L.Adams 55), Broadhurst[/box]
