Carlton Town 0-2 Steels
Stocksbridge Park Steels got back to winning ways in the league after a 2-0 win over Carlton Town.
There won’t be too many words written about the first half as there wasn’t too much action in it to justify the words. The Carlton officials had done a great job to get the game on considering the effect Storm Babet had on the area, but the pitch was a factor in both teams taking their time to feel things out. This meant there were limited chances in the first half with both teams struggling with their final ball. Carlton were the closest to either team scoring as Matthew Ford’s free kick was curled around the wall well but Ben Townsend made a great save to touch it onto the post. The rebound was then blared over.
In the second half, both teams were much improved and showed more in attack than they had in the first half. One big chance for Stocksbridge was when Ross Goodwin showed great physicality to avoid losing the ball to his defender, bulldozing his way through into the box. All it lacked was a finish as he would hit it well over.
The clock was ticking and it was starting to become increasingly likely that it was going to end goalless. However it wasn’t to be. Ben Townsend took a free kick and got it right into the box. Carlton’s keeper Felix Annan missed his punch and a touch from a Carlton defender knocked it to Elliot Murray. The defender then showed the sort of poise in front of goal you don’t see from his position, taking a touch before hitting a well taken finish to give Stocksbridge the lead.
Carlton did start to push to get an equaliser but the next and most important goal would be for the away side. It was good passing from Stocksbridge around the pass as they looked to unlock a Carlton defence which were rushing to get the ball back, and Ollie Nowak’s pass found Kurtis Turner who slammed a powerful shot home to make it 2-0.
The Millers’ evening would get worse. Stocksbridge were trying to get even more goals and it looked likely when leading scorer Luke Rawson burst through onto a good pass. He was having a tussle with Shea Thompson-Harris has he was going through but the defender ended up just wrestling him to the ground before Rawson could get into the box. As he was the last man, Thompson-Harris was given his marching orders. Turner could only hit the free kick against the wall but it didn’t matter as Stocksbridge had already got three points.
