Just when the Bacup Borough Faithful thought it could not get any worse from the past three weeks of losing key players with injury early in the game, Bacup were reduced to ten men on thirty minutes when Laquan Esdaile whilst competing for a long ball was adjudged by the Assistant to have impeded the player from which the Referee showed him a straight red card harshly as he most certainly was not the last man as Marc Taylor had got himself across from the opposite side of the pitch.

Despite this set back Bacup had all the possession during the first half with the threat coming from Daniel Cocks but whilst the majority were half chances created the Silsden keeper pulled off a very good save from equally a very good shot from Daniel Cocks, despite Bacup having had the majority of possession the nearest Silsden came was following a corner which was headed off the line.

The second half at every opportunity Silsden were just happy to break up any Bacup threat and then go direct in the hope that they could get in behind the home sides defence, this apart from an isolated occasion when they did male an attempt to build up play resulting in a long range well struck shot which Paul Horridge produced a very good save.

Following the fact that Bacup were harshly reduced to ten men, it seemed like the young official was intent on giving Silsden an helping hand when Lee Oldham seemed to be fouled by a Silsden player in the Bacup penalty area, not giving the initial foul in favour of Oldham he awarded Silsden a penalty adjudging Oldham had hold of the player going to ground, the Silsden player put the spot kick wide so it seemed justice to be done.

Despite the fact that Bacup had been playing forty minutes with a player down they certainly did not deserve what came next resulting in an eighty third minute winning goal for Silsden, the ball was in the air dropping which Lance Ogunyode could have headed back, rather than take this option he swung a leg at the ball but sliced the ball backwards in the direction of his own goal, if that was not bad enough Lee Pugh had chance to have cleared the danger but rather than clear the danger he tried to get the ball onto his left foot from which Timothy Herd disposed putting the ball past Horridge, this was a cruel ending for Bacup who despite being down to ten men most certainly did not deserve to be beaten.

The Bacup Borough Manager had this to say “Despite our injury situation and lads having to play in unfamiliar positions, prior to the sending off I thought we were well and truly in control , the back line looked assured and comfortable, our midfield were disciplined within their duties and Daniel Cocks was pulsating causing Silsden all sorts of problems, then came the sending off which disrupted the balance of our team, despite this I still felt we were dealing with everything well, this apart from a ten minute spell when Silsden got the ball forward very quickly from which their movement of their strikers and midfield runners did cause us a problem that from where I was watching we looked to have lost our shape badly, the reason behind this is the lack of talking between players, once we got to grips with this situation I just did not see Silsden scoring but then I don’t legislate for Lance opting to try to hook the ball away which got sliced, this rather than head the ball away from the danger once this happened, I would hope a defender would get across to quickly clear the danger, this also did not happen so we get punished.

Peters finished by saying “ under the circumstances of what happened being reduced to ten men for such a long period in the game, those lads worked really hard to the point one would not have noticed we were down in numbers, the entire team in defeat can hold their heads high, their goal was a gift, a mistake and these things happen, despite conceding and in the manner we did concede, we did not deserve to come away with nothing, there is no doubts about it for the past few weeks lady luck as big time deserted us but I have nothing but admiration by the way these lads are handling the situation “

Team: Paul Horridge, Marc Taylor, Adrian Bellamy, Laquan Esdaile, Lee Pugh, Daniel Cocks (Martin Cosgrave ) Lance Ogunyode, Lee Oldham, Matthew Hampson ( Karl Stanley) Haydn Paul (Luke Hargreaves) Tommy Turner.

Subs Not Used: Arran Spencer, Max Jones Matthew Wrigley

Goals: -

Home - Fixtures