Nantwich Town’s stumbling league campaign took another hit yesterday with a disappointing 1-0 home defeat to Newcastle Town.
The loss leaves the Dabbers third from bottom Northern Premier League West, but they do have some games in hand over teams around them.
Tyler Hill made his first start after joining Nantwich on a work experience loan from Blackpool, with Connor Rankin coming on for his Dabbers debut later in the game after signing from Lower Breck.
Troy Bourne thought he’d given the Dabbers the lead just two minutes in, only for the flag to go up for offside.
Replays showed that Nathan Okome was onside when the initial ball was played forward by Stevie Hewitt, and Bourne himself was on when Okome chested it down.
Kai Evans was almost through on goal after a good ball through from Sean Cooke before a fine challenge from Joshua Jordan stopped him just as he was preparing to get a shot away.
Byron Harrison headed wide, before Kyle Stubbs miscued an effort wide of Nantwich’s post.
Sean Cooke tried to catch out Joseph Slinn from range with a free kick but just curled it wide.
It was clever from Cooke and Hewitt as it had all looked as if Hewitt was lining up to whip it into the box before Cooke took aim.
Danny Roberts had to make one decent save from Patryk Mazurkiewicz before the break, and right before that whistle Evans tried to lob Slinn twice in quick succession but he was up to the task of saving them both.
The second half was much of the same. Slinn made a mess of a free kick but no one in Nantwich was following in to pounce on the mistake.
The away side started to get joy from crosses out wide, one smartly headed clear by Scott Butler in what could have been an own goal if he got it wrong.
Newcastle took the lead on 57 minutes as a low cross bore fruit.
It was palmed away by Roberts but bounced in off Mazurkiewicz who knew little about it but he and everyone in blue didn’t care.
Harrison flicked a header wide as the clock ticked down and Nantwich struggled to respond and increasingly looked devoid of ideas and confidence.
There was a shout for a Nantwich penalty as Evans went down under close contact from a Newcastle defender with five minutes to go, the referee wasn’t interested.
The Dabbers came closest to equalising when a Hewitt free kick was saved by Slinn with Harrison sniffing around for a tap-in.
The next home game for Nantwich is against Bootle on Tuesday night.
(Images courtesy of Jonathan White)
Worst performance I have seen all season,all the players looked tired after 10 minutes,this resulted in a very flat and disjointed performance the midfield were non existent, just long balls knocked forward.
Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come,to win in any league you have to give your best,unfortunately non of the nantwhich players came near to that.