Colwyn Bay 3 - 3 Gainsborough Trinity - 07/04/01 - League
Colwyn Bay's dramatic season
continued on Saturday as the team and its supporters suffered enough agony and
ecstasy in the 3-3 home draw with
Gainsborough Trinity.
The Bay played better than their next to bottom position suggests against a well
organised Lincolnshire outfit which is seventh in the Unibond Premier League.
With the point gained Bay are three points behind Frickley with two games in
hand and seven games yet to play. On this kind of evidence no serious
observer of drama serials would write them off, but it will be nail biting stuff
as Saturday's match proved.
The home side started brightly and had the visitors on the defensive although
the visitor's strikers Paul Watts and Lee Ellington were quick to
break.
Bay never really threatened the Trinity goal except for fierce shots from Glen
Graham and Graham Roberts from both of which claims for hand ball
penalties were turned down.
The Trinity defenders dealt ruthlessly with strikers James McIlvogue and Deiniol
Graham with defender Neil Allison lucky not to be sent off for an
elbow on Graham.
The story of the game is best seen through the goals which kept the watching
home fans in a state of limbo between heaven and a nervous breakdown.
Act one saw Glen Graham in the midst of Bay's first half pressure turn the ball
back towards his own goal, it took on a greater pace than intended and lobbed
over his own defensive colleagues into the path of Trinity's Lee Ellington who
ran on to score.
Act two belonged to the tenacious McIlvogue who at last got the goal he
deserved, heading home a Marc Limbert corner on 53 minutes.
And five minutes later McIlvogue was again on target, this time he ran on to a
Dean Williams through ball and lobbed the ball over Martin into the net.
With Bay apparently cruising act three came when goalkeeper Richie Roberts
miscued his clearance and the ball fell to Paul Watts who lobbed an easy
equaliser.
Soon after Roberts was unlucky after his brilliant point blank save was answered
by another Ellington goal on 75 minutes, to make it 3-2 to the
visitors.
With full time looming Deiniol Graham was brought down in the area by Danny
Brown and a penalty was awarded, the only correct decision the home crowd avowed
the referee.
Graham slotted the ball coolly into the Trinity net to give Bay a vital point in
their battle against relegation, when it could so easily have been
three.