The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

Trek wrote:St Ives slipped up badly at home to lowly Aylesbury United.

No they got out of the game exactly what they deserved.
Aylesbury Utd may produce some more surprises before May.

Brownie wrote: No they got out of the game exactly what they deserved.

That's good to know.

It would appear that Ricky Marheinke agrees.

'Moneybags' Rushden. Now where have we heard that?

A draw was probably a fair result in the end. We started poorly and Fleet were arguably the better side until HT. After HT it was a different story but despite wave after wave of attack I could probably count all meaningful chances we had on one hand.

Not totally sure about the penalty appeal at the end. I thought Lorraine's fall looked theatrical so from that point of view could see why the very young (and largely poor) referee didn't give it.

Unfortunately the pitch probably levelled the game. It really wasn't good at all. A bit like Aylesbury, it's not hard to see why their home record is so good in comparison to their away form when a match is supposed to be played on this:

That pitch makes the Dog & Duck pitch look like a bowls green!!

Anyone know what the attendance was today?

According to this page ...

http://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/south ... al/matches

it was 201.

I also think a draw was a fair result, but we could easily have won it near the end. I'd been wondering why Shawn Richards hadn't replaced Claudiu, given he had picked up the booking early on for a poor challenge (even if there was little / no contact with the Fleet #4 who went down as if hit by a bulldozer). However, in the last 10 minutes Claudiu was unplayable. He seemed to be given licence to make runs through the middle, making it easier for him to switch either side of a challenge, and these runs could easily have brought a goal or a penalty. We need to make sure he has such opportunity for the whole game if he continues to keep Shawn Richards out of the side.

Fleet seemed to be playing for a draw for the whole game - and were lucky to get away with the clear contact on Tom Lorraine that looked a clear penalty.

The Fleet groundsman had done a great job to get the game on - if you look at the video you can see how the pitch looked ok in the middle at the start, but soon cut up. Great credit also goes to all the Diamonds fans who made the trip there, as it looked far from certain we'd have a game once we saw how much rain they'd had that morning.

Jack Ashton is really back to his best now, and was my MoM, with Finners also deserving a mention.

Trek wrote:'Moneybags' Rushden. Now where have we heard that?

It's really quite something to see how some managers in the non-league pyramid still see our name and automatically rewind back to the 1990s. This guy believes he's got a result against a team backed by a multi-millionaire, or if not he's drilled it into his players that that's the case. A lazy motivational tactic really, and it'll be interesting to see how he manages his players now their Real Madrid game is out of the way.

Looking at the other results, inconsistency is still blighting many of the other title challengers but fair play to Egham who have it in their hands. All we can do is keep putting the pressure on them to win their games in hand, hopefully continuing with a win v St Ives on Tuesday.