Harriers 1 Oxford 1

Ian Britton
By KJ
August 30 2003

Harriers halted their recent slide with an encouraging display against Oxford. New loan signing Adam Murray made his debut in a much changed Kidder line up.

HARRIERS 1 OXFORD 1 A BRIEF REPORT
So we ended our brief losing streak with, what can only be described as a useful point against high flyers Oxford. The main development before the game was the arrival of loan signing, Adam Murray, from 1st division Derby County. More on Adam later.
Harriers manager did make some wholesale changes to the starting eleven, well as wholesale as you can get with our small squad. Sean Parrish replaced Shilton on the left side and the biggest shock was the inclusion of Graham Ward, who replaced captain Sean Flynn. This is not to say Ward didn’t deserve his chance, his performance at Ipswich was impressive, it was just the dropping of Flynn. Adam Willis took the captains armband, and in another change, Adam Murray was given his debut in place of Dean Bennett.
The match really livened up in the last ten minutes or so. Before that neither side really looked like scoring. Finally the U’s took the lead with a fine effort from Rawle. He turned on the left wing and shot into the top corner, over the diving Brock. So that’s when it looked like three straight defeats until captain for the day, Adam Willis slid in an equaliser. This followed good play from Murray who made a chance for sub John Williams, who shot across goal for Willis to convert from close in. straight after this, Kidder could have claimed all the points when Bo Henrisken was fouled inside the area and the “good” ref (for a change) pointed to the spot. After a bit of a delay due to protests from the Oxford players Bo finally took the spot kick. Unfortunately he put it wide and that was that. Oxford came on strong late on but there was no further score.
So disappointing with the penalty miss, but all in all a fair result. Prior to this game I wasn’t confident at all really. The arrival of Adam Murray did perk me up a little. I think he will do well for us, after all he’s made over 30 starts for Derby in the Premiership and 1st division. He did show some good touches today and I think he can only get better and will settle in after more training sessions with the lads. Its good that we can get this type of player. This is when I think the way we play the game does help us. We like to pass it around a bit and have a good reputation. This will do young lads like Adam and others such as JJ Melligan before him no harm. Maybe our performance at Ipswich helped, after all Derby are managed by former tractor boy George Burley and I’m sure coaches talk to each other.
Hopefully we can take encouragement from today into our next game away at Bristol Rovers. Last season we won at their place and JJ Melligan was on the scoresheet, lets hope Adam Murray can follow him. The season before saw us lose 2-1 with referee Fraser Stretton assisting the Pirates to victory. I noticed today we were due to have Mark Cowburn, another “atrocity “ on the leagues list. Fortunately we had our old friend Trevor Parkes. He refereed the LDV game against Swindon last season and restored my faith in the game after the all new Mark Cowburn show against Carlisle. He did ok today, unfussy and there to referee the game, not get noticed like fools such as Cowburn, Stretton and Hedgley. The thing is, true fans remember such displays, lets hope his superiors do too. Presumably Mrs Cowburn had finally invited her husband to one of those swingers parties, she has every Saturday afternoon.