Saturday, March 11, 2000

HIGH-flying Kidderminster Harriers had their wings clipp-ed when draw specialists Alt-rincham held them to a 1-1 deadlock in Saturday's Nationwide Conference clash at Aggborough.

The result left manager Jan Molby's table-toppers five points ahead of second-placed Rushden & Diamonds who have two games in hand.

They opened the scoring after 55 minutes through man-of-the-match Mike Marsh, but allowed Altrincham to hit back five minutes later with a goal from Mick Morrell.

For Kidderminster it was the first points they had dropped at Aggborough since drawing 1-1 with Hereford United on Jan-uary 3.

The last time they were beaten at home in the Conference was when they went down 2-1 to Nuneaton Borough on September 13.

Since then they have been unbeaten in 13 league outings at Aggborough, an impressive run which includes 11 victories.

After Saturday's deadlock Harriers goalkeeper Tim Clarke said: "The boys are disappointed not to have won obviously. We set our standards and we felt we didn't play to those standards. Everybody now has got to pick their heads up, put things right on the training ground and carry that forward onto the pitch in our next match at Welling on Saturday."

The experienced Clarke, however, felt that Harriers should have done better when mid-table Altrincham notched their equaliser.

"You can't blame anybody for the goal. I think collectively we just did not do our jobs as well as we had been doing up until then.

"We said when we went top after Christ-mas that we had a lot of games left and there was no way we were going to win them all. But we have got results out of most of them since going top and now we have just got to make sure we don't lose and continue to pick up points.

"They say win your home games and draw your away ones. I think with our win at Doncaster the previous Tuesday and now this result against Altrincham it's evened itself out slightly."

Clarke believes that Rushden's draw ag-ainst Sutton United in the FA Umbro Trophy on Saturday is a result which will indirectly help Harriers.

"It puts pressure on them even more because they have got at least another game to play in it. We are five points clear and they have got to make good those five points. It's no good having games in hand because at the end of the day you have got to win them.

"Altrincham went 14 games undefeated recently so we knew they were capable of coming here and upsetting us and not getting beaten. That's what we had to try to overcome, but this coming Saturday we go out and get three points."

As well as dropping a couple of points Kidderminster also suffered an injury setback when winger Thomas Skovbjerg was stretched off in the 26th minute to be replaced by Mark Druce.

He badly twisted his right knee and was due to have a scan today.

During the first half neither side had a serious effort on-target with Harriers finding it hard to negotiate a way through Altrincham's solid rear-guard.

The deadlock was finally broken, however, when Mar-sh curled in a perfectly plac-ed free-kick past the visitors' 'keeper Lance Key.

The cheers had only just died down when Altrincham grabbed their equaliser when Morrell knocked the ball in after a Gary Talbot header had rebounded off the post.

After that the nearest Kidd-erminster went to getting their noses back in front was with a shot from Dean Bennett which went just over and a late effort from substitute Phil King that was neatly saved by Key.

It was Altrincham's 15th league draw of the season and Kidderminster's fifth.