Matlock Take Full Advantage!

By Lauren Walton
August 6 2002

Matlock Town held no prisoners as they cruised to a well deserved win which was made easy with sloppy defending. Lots of Chesterfield fans filled into the gladiators ground and went home very disappointed after an embarrassing and rubbish performance!

Chesterfield Team: Richmond,Davies, Parrott, Wharton, Gaunt, Innes, Howard, Richardson,A Rushbury, Burt, Smith
Subs: Cook, Warne, Digregorie

Matlock Team: Tye, S Clarke, Varley, W Davies, Hutchinson, Lomas, I Clarke, Taylor, G Williams,P Brown
Subs: Fairclough, R Taylor, Tilly, Noteman, Holland, Walker

Matlock Town 3 Chesterfield 1

The Gladiators managed to take the lead on as little as 7 minutes because of sloppy defending by the spireites. Matlock Town looked the most convincing team for the first 10 minutes and I was not one bit surprised when they took the lead!
They put Chesterfield under immense pressure from the word go and as the match got underway that did not change one bit!

The first goal well we can put that down to Andy Richmond's clumsiness as it was such a soft goal to conceed! Matlock's goalie Tye looked very impressive on numerous occasions except when he dropped a clanger later on in the match! The spireites team were wearing last season's red away strip with no numbers or names so as you can imagine it was quite hard to recognise players from a distance. Even Matlock Town had numbers on the back and there not even in the league!

On 7 minutes Davies took the lead for Matlock thanks to Andy Richmond. No I must point out it wasn't entirely his fault...THE DEFENCE was shocking!!! And as the ball hit the back of the net Chesterfield fans were just stunned, I cannot say anything else other than that!

Chesterfield had a couple of shots, one which went anywhere but near the goal and on 13 minutes Taylor made it 2-0 to Matlock with an amazing goal. Even I had to clap it was stunning he blasted it and it went right over Richmond after he'd dived to save it. Goals just don't get any better than that! Although Chesterfield's defence was yet again nowhere to be seen.

Some of the refs decisions were a little to be desired aswell and we can tell why he doesn't ref at a higher level! Some of the tackles that went in were very harsh to say it was a friendly but nothing too bad.

Again Matlock put us under pressure and began to dominate but a goal for the gladiators was ruled off-side on the 41st minute. It was obvious offside aswell I shall point out! Matlock again had a breakaway on the 43rd minute and were really unlucky not to score and it was an impressive attempt!

Second Half:
Nothing really caught my attention until the 53rd minute and this was a Chesterfield breakaway by Jonny Howard and this was the best attempt of the game but then again there wasn't many to choose from! For 10 minutes Chesterfield started to play with a little more passion but that soon died away again.

Around the 68/69th minute mark a Matlock defender backpassed to Tye in the Matlock goal and he handled the ball. So Chesterfield were sort of given a penalty but the majority of the Matlock players were in the net. Jamie Burt stepped up to take it and I was stunned when it beat all the players in the net on the 70th minute.

Now the score was 2-1 but Chesterfield did nothing to even try and draw near it was almost pathetic. Then on the 87th minute Matlock scored again and sealed the game up. I do not know who scored as I had, had enough and was starting to leave the ground!

I just hope for all our sakes this is nothing on what the season has installed for us because if it has then all I'm going to say is it's going to be a tough battle to survive in division Two! If nothing else I still don't feel Rushbury is the right man for the job!