Euxton Villa 2  Blackrod Town 2

What on paper looked to be a nailed-on home banker in fact turned out to be a dire and dull affair, with Villa unable to establish any kind of superiority over an opposition who themselves have struggled to find form so far this season. Damien Stewart chose to run at a pretty ordinary defence twice, and two goals resulted, adding to the collective frustration as to why he declines to do so more often. However, Mickey Mouse defending of their own saw Villa  give away two sloppy goals to allow Blackrod an easy point, which might even have been three but for a couple of timely saves from Ross Baxter.

As expected, Villa carried the game to the opposition from the off, but less than fifteen minutes had elapsed before the self destruct button was pressed. An unnecessary short back pass saw Baxter scuff the clearance under pressure, and the ball was returned unto the unguarded net.

This lifted the visitors, in contrast to the home side who looked visibly shaken and lost the initiative with which they had begun, and Blackrod found themselves clean through again five minutes later, but failed to capitalise. Villa’s only response in this time was a rare but very well struck volley from Paul Loughlin, which unfortunately found the keeper in the right place. 

Then, ten minutes from the interval, Stewart picked up the ball from a throw in deep in his own half, turned, and sprinted eighty yards to the bye-line before cutting back for Ryan Lilley to side foot home.. Simple as that, and Villa should have gone on from there, but a well saved shot from Alf Gutteridge was as close as Euxton came to regaining the ascendancy in the remainder of the half.

Villa started the second half as though they meant business, and Loughlin found Dave Mason with a well placed header, and his pile driver forced another fine save. Then, in the sixty third minute, Stewart gathered on the half way, turned, and on the end of a driving run into the box, fired an unstoppable into the top corner.

 Though Villa had their noses in front at last, the game was far from sewn up. Both keepers were called into action in equal measure, until ten minutes from time, when Blackrod went on a routine stroll down the right wing, ending with an unopposed shot across goal, and what do you know, all square again. 

With most of Villa’s fire power now kicking their heels on the bench, you just couldn’t see where a winner was going to come from. And indeed, the match petered out with more of a whimper than a bang, and a result that felt more like a defeat than a draw.

Yes, Villa were missing a couple of key players from the middle, but everyone who took part would consider themselves of first team pedigree. But on the basis of this, and indeed last week’s result and performance, some will have to do a lot of self analysis.

Villa Line-up: Baxter, C.Chambers, Davies, L.Chambers, Marquis, Gutteridge (Atherton 67), Loughlin, Bolton, Stewrat, Lilley (Pennington82), Mason (Briggs66)