Grays stay cool to keep up fine start
Grays withstood a late onslaught from a revitalised Aldershot Town to maintain their unbeaten start to the season.
Blues looked home and hosed when Tony Battersby added to Glenn Poole’s goal three minutes after the re-start but winger Nick Crittenden struck back just six minutes later sparking a rousing Shots fight-back that looked certain to conclude with an equaliser.
However, some dogged defending from a new-look Grays rearguard and an incredible goal-line clearance from debutant, Stevland Angus, ensured the home side repelled everything thrown at them by the visiting attack.
”it was a battle out there,” Grays boss Mark Stimson, said afterwards. “They got their goal and just kept putting the ball into the box and put us under a lot of pressure.
”But out defending was brilliant and the two new lads, Cameron Mawer and Stevland Angus, came in and put in two excellent performances.
”We will come against that in the Conference with teams looking to hit the big men in the box and Aldershot asked us a lot of questions but I think we answered them.”
Stimson made three changes from the side that beat Hereford United so thrillingly two day’s earlier with Angus replacing Joe Bruce at the heart of the defence, Dean Brennan coming in for Gary Hooper and Aaron McLean deputising for the injured Dennis Oli.
Playing against his former employers McLean set out like he has a point to prove and if it hadn’t have been for some wasteful finishing he would have had the goal that his all round effort deserved.
Twice the 21-year-old went close in the opening exchanges: First his snap shot, after a mistake from Tobi Jinadu, was comfortably fielded by keeper, Nikki Bull an then came within inches of converting a Poole cross.
Chris McPhee headed Shots’ best chance wide from a Crittenden cross from the right while on the other flank, Ahmed Deen, who snubbed a move to Grays this summer, was getting some right treatment from Mawer.
The right back was eventually booked after a crashing challenge on the fleet-footed winger mid-way through the half.
Blues broke the deadlock ten minutes before the interval when Dean Brennan’s lofted ball forward was expertly controlled by Battersby who laid the ball deftly off to McLean.
McLean waited brilliantly for Poole to bomb past on the left and slipped a tidy ball through to the ex-Thurrock man who stroked the ball past Bull and into the far corner.
The ever-lively, McLean, then tested Bull from an acute angle and Poole should have done better when he was put clean through but he allowed Tarkan Mustafa to recover and block his shot.
McLean again was involved seconds before the half-time whistle when he tried to acrobatically volley in a mistake from Tobi Jinadu but instead hit fresh air.
A spell of home pressure, immediately after the re-start, paid instant dividends when Battersby doubled Grays’ advantage with a header at the back post following a short corner worked by Poole and Stuart Thurgood.
But Grays’ lead was halved soon after by the influential Crittenden who latched onto a Ryan Scott flick on and coolly slid the ball past Ashley Bayes.
Buoyed by the goal Shots laid siege to the Grays goal; and showed the kind of form that took them to the Conference play-offs in the last two seasons.
At the heart of their play of Crittenden who was giving John Nutter and Poole a torrid time on the right wing.
The ex-Chelsea trainee should have scored after a slip by Mawer and twice had shots beaten away by Bayes after mesmerising runs through the home defence.
On the second time the ball rebounded off Bayes to McPhee whose goalbound header was brilliantly hacked off the line by Angus to keep his side in front.
The visitors continued to press forward right to the of the five minutes of overtime, loading ball after ball into the Grays box but marshalled by the excellent Jamie Stuart and skipper Thurgood, Blues held firm to cap off a brilliant Bank Holiday weekend.
Afterwards, Stimson paid tribute to his troops and singled out skipper Stuart Thurgood for special praise.
”Th last two games we have seen the kind of Stuart that we saw last year,” he said. “It took him a while to adjust to the division but I thought him and Johnny Martin were excellent today”.
Report by Ryan Goad
Thanks to the Thurrock Gazette for the match report
|