Harrogate Town opinion: Improved performances need to be turned into points

After the six-goal thriller at home to Carlisle last Tuesday night, the visit of league leaders Leyton Orient on Saturday proved to be a step too far for a recently-improved Harrogate Town team.

The table doesn’t lie at this stage in the season and our visitors from East London pressed far higher than the Cumbrians, threatening every time they went forward early on, with winger Paul Smyth looking particularly tricky.

Under these circumstances, Town had to keep tight, focused and switched on. They managed this for all of seven minutes, and the game was gone by the midway point of the opening period.

It’s a bitter irony that, despite all their bright attacking play, Orient were handed both goals on a plate. They didn’t even have to work for the first one as Smyth, only an inch taller than Josh Falkingham, rose completely unchallenged to glance a near post header in off the far post.

The goal was even harder to take because the corner came from a shot that had been sliced high and wide into the Kop. We’d all cheered of course, but the official had judged it had flicked off Kayne Ramsay. From our side-on view in the Wetherby Road stand it didn’t look like it.

From then on it was one-way traffic in terms of goal threat, but Harrogate held firm until the dangerous Smyth ran onto a through-ball down the right-hand channel and into the penalty area.

Pete Jameson initially hesitated, but went to ground in an attempt to push the ball from the attacker’s feet. The Orient man made no attempt to miss our goalkeeper’s arm and went down like a ton of bricks.

Studying replays until I almost went blind, it appears Jameson didn’t get the ball, so penalty it unfortunately was, as attackers no longer seem to have to at least make a token effort to avoid a dangling arm or leg.

In hindsight, the Town stopper should maybe just have attempted to force Smyth wide, but it was an honest attempt for the ball and we had a covering defender heading to the line, so there was no danger of a red card being produced.

And that was it. We feared another collapse as in the Newport game, but it didn’t materialise, and the major entertainment for us home fans was the sight of the lads from the local Army Foundation College marching round to join the choir in the Kop in a rowdy end to the first half, leading a chant of ‘No noise from the Orient boys…’

The half-time whistle saw an unhappy Jameson walk slowly towards the officials on the halfway line with the match ball, dropping it short of them as they waited, before giving them a piece of his mind. Simon Weaver moved smartly across to usher him away.

The second 45 was better, as Town made a half-decent fist of a fightback, without it ever materialising. Although, if Danny Grant’s shot which was cleared off the goal-line had gone in, who knows?

The final stats show the hosts shading possession and equaling Orient’s tally of shots on goal, although the visitors always looked the most likely. There’s a school of thought that the league leaders took their foot off the pedal, but I’m not so sure.

Yet as the second half wore on, and the army cadets retreated to the Black Sheep Stand and their rucksacks, Town saw a lot of the ball. How different it would have been if one of the earlier fine margins had turned in our favour and we’d only been the one goal down.

"We can see you marching out,” sang the Kop, before trooping round to join the army cadets in the Black Sheep Stand for more bouncing up and down and singing. Can we recruit them every Saturday to help boost the atmosphere?

This may have been the week in which Town slid into the bottom two, but fortunately everyone else around us lost as well. The only certain thing is that we can’t rely on that happening every week.

Although well-beaten on Saturday, our improved performances need to be turned into three-point-hauls. And fast.