Too Little Too Late

Thank goodness the other results went our way - but what a missed opportunity to move further away from the bottom two. Southend sneaked a 1-0 win thanks to their physical presence and our inability to get going unto the last 15 minutes.

A first minute injury to Jordan Hugill won't have helped our game plan but Marlon Harewood put in a decent shift in his place.

However, with Franks off the pace we had little threat and surprisingly little energy given the importance of the game played in front of a big holiday crowd.

Sub Lewis Hawkins showed what we needed when he came on for Brad Walker and his energy finally got us on the front foot. He went very close with an overhead kick, and Dan Jones rattled the crossbar so hard the entire net shook so we all thought it had hit the back of the onion bag and come back out. Sadly it hadn't.

The only goal came on 52 minutes from a poor clearance which fell to Will Atkinson and he had little trouble in hammering the ball home.

The excellent Scott Harrison was pushed up front and did his very best to get us back in the game, but despite plenty of corners and lots of speculative balls into the  box we rarely tested the visiting goalie.