Stones see off Salisbury in stoppage time
MAIDSTONE UNITED 2 SALISBURY 1
Salisbury haven’t yet conquered Arabia through “sports-centric guerrilla marketing”, but they have won the heart of OmarAl-Hamad, a man whose blue-tick has earned him nine followers on Twitter. He didn’t take Saturday’s defeat well suggesting the referee was on both alcohol and drugs.
Maybe he was. Events in non-league football have frequently left me wondering if I’ve been hallucinating. Did I watch Steve Collins’ brother say he was moving over to Gravesend with “the wife” to take over at Stonebridge Road? Are Maldon & Tiptree about to get liquidated after their owners were charged with people trafficking and sex offences? Did Rusthall’s game really get called off after one of their players was arrested? It never used to stop us. (Insert: the game’s gone remark here …)
Weird things are happening everywhere and that includes Salisbury, where minority-stake holder Tiger Miller spoke last year about “building global fanbases through cinematic, multilingual storytelling across the world’s largest digital platforms”. On Friday their website ran a story saying they’d acquired Andover Town, which begs a number of questions. And also, if they’re so big on the power of storytelling, why is their website so Step Seven?
But these are all questions for another day.
Salisbury might have been unlucky yesterday. The consensus was that Maidstone hadn’t really been at it, but we kept going and exploited a man advantage right at the death. Whether we should have had that man advantage is a question that might not even be settled by the replays, but the pivotal moment came around five minutes before the break, when they were 1-0 ahead and Taylor Foran tried a risky sliding tackle on Jaiden Bartolo in the area.
It fell into the “seen ‘em given territory” but the referee didn’t buy it and nor did the linesman. Bartolo was booked for diving and neither he nor the bench really complained at the time.
He’d already assisted Salisbury’s goal on the half hour, heading Ollie Morgan’s cross against the bar, before Jordan Alonge headed in the rebound, but five minutes after the restart he was sent off for leaving one in on Leo Hamblin.
By then Maidstone had already levelled, via a deflected shot from Riley Court three minutes before the break and as soon as Bartolo went off the feeling was that with 40 minutes remaining we’d probably go on to win.
It was inevitably more complicated than that. Ryan Hanson hit the post from an acute angle, but Salisbury seemed to be holding out reasonably comfortably and might have nicked it had the sub, Nathan Odonkonyero, not fluffed a chance in injury time.
In the last of the three added minutes, however, Frankie Hvid chipped one over the top for Tom Leahy and Will Henry, who’d been largely flawless until that point, charged out of his area to tackle him. The ball fell to Hanson who kept calm and picked his spot from around 30 yards.
There was still time for one last Salisbury attack, but when this broke down the sub, Rowan Gravenell-James, surged forwards and was taken out by Yacou Traore, who was shown a second yellow.
Court’s free-kick went just over, but the referee immediately blew the final whistle. Salisbury’s manager Brian Dutton came across well, given how disappointed he must have been, admitting that he’d got the substitutions wrong, blaming an “unready” Harry Thomas for the goal and not lingering on the perceived injustice when he was invited to.
Craig Fagan admitted we’d been lucky but was delighted with the way we dug in.
As for the ref, if he did want drink or drugs he might reflect that while these commodities are hard to come by in some of the areas Salisbury are planning to become massive in, they are freely available in some of Maidstone’s more exclusive districts. Brenchley Gardens is just five minutes from this football ground.
