Lloyd Kerry insists that contributing at both ends for Harrogate Town is just 'part and parcel' of his job

Lloyd Kerry in action during Harrogate Town's 2-2 draw at Crawley. Picture: Matt Kirkham

The 33-year-old’s run to the near post helped create the chaos inside the six-yard box which led to Red Devils defender Archie Davies diverting Jack Muldoon’s dangerous right-wing cross into his own net, ultimately earning the Sulphurites a point.

Not long afterwards, the former Sheffield United trainee tracked back and made a last-ditch, goal-saving challenge when Ashley Nadesan took the ball past Town custodian Mark Oxley and attempted to square it towards a waiting team-mate.

Yet Kerry says he was only doing what is expected of a player in his position.

“It’s part and parcel of being a central midfielder, doing both sides of the game,” he told the Harrogate Advertiser.

“You’ve got to try and make an impact in both boxes. I try and play as a box-to-box midfielder, so in a midfield two, you’ve got to do your defensive duties. In that moment, they were on the counter-attack and I could see that he was going to pull it back and I managed to read it and get a last-ditch tackle in.

“As for the goal, I can’t claim it. I would love to, but I can’t. I made a near-post run and it just went behind me, but we can say that I put the defender off.”

Town chief Simon Weaver said after the game that he felt Tuesday’s point was a “decent” one, and while Kerry agrees that there areplenty of positives to take, he was disappointed to leave Sussex without all three.

“We’re disappointed because we dominated large parts of the game,” he added.

“We’ve come away from home and they’ve had a five-minute spell and they’ve scored two goals, so it is disappointing but there were loads of positives.

“I think it was a good reaction [to Saturday’s first defeat of the season at Port Vale]. I think we started really brightly, on the front foot, got an early goal and I thought we were quite comfortable.

“We’ve dominated a lot of the game, we’ve created loads of chances but switched off for five minutes and that has cost us three points.

“We have looked at the two goals and they are avoidable. One was on the break from our corner, the other one from a set-piece, so it’s disappointing, but we take the point and take the positives.”