By Liam Price, photos by Jonathan White
Witton Albion blew Nantwich Town away in a 15-minute spell in the first half to claim a 3-0 victory at the Swansway Stadium.
While shirt numbers are not fixed at this level, a couple of the Dabbers ones were eye-catching, like Aidy Roxburgh the right back with no.7 and Joe Piggott the midfielder with no.9. And that did correlate roughly with where they played, with Roxburgh in the advanced role he scored from against Boston in the FA Trophy.
For 20 minutes almost nothing happened other than James Baillie missing the target with a free kick and a blocked Roxburgh shot. Then things burst into life, and all for Witton.
Their first real attack brought the first goal. Worked down the left, James Steele managed to squeeze in an effort at the near post. A man with a good goalscoring record at Step 4, including for the now defunct Widnes FC, Steele is starting to fill his boots with the Albion.
They almost doubled the lead 2 minutes later, a shot zipped in from a narrow angle across the face of goal went for a corner, suggesting perhaps a save from Liam Hall that was hard to see in real time.
It didn’t matter though as it was 2-0 only moments later. There was no dressing up the weak Nantwich defending that first allowed the Witton man to escape down their right and stand up a cross and then for Freddy Garbutt to head in totally unmarked. For arguably the best no.9 of the early NPL West season to have that amount of space was very poor.
Worse was to follow for Nantwich. 2 minutes after that, somehow Jacob Hamman was afforded acres of space on the opposite side, which he duly ran into and executed a great finish into the top left corner. As hard a finish as that was to pull off, it was made easier by the absence of Nantwich players closing him down.
So that was the game over after 35 minutes, even with the Vauxhall comeback in recent memory there was no semblance of anything close to that ever materialising here.
Tom Graves, a promising young defender definitely not brought in for his goalscoring prowess, missed the target with a presentable chance near half time, but at least he actually did shoot. It’s hard to remember if any Nantwich attacker had a shot to their name in the entire game.
The second half was 2 teams largely going through the motions. Some top defending from Geffry Ebhote denied a Dabbers consolation on the goal line, only for a goal kick to be given.
The Nantwich crowd, who by this stage had reached the ‘anger’ stage of grief, directed that anger at the officials for most of the second period, but none of the minor questionable decisions would have had an impact on the result.
What appeared to be the only Nantwich shot on target in the game came in the final minute of stoppage time, which rather summed it all up.
The next home game for the Dabbers is against Congleton Town on Tuesday 15th September.
Teams
Nantwich Town: Liam Hall, Tom Graves (Ollie Pope, 65), James Baillie, Joe Collins (Luke Enright, 65), Harry Davis (C), Paddy Kennedy, Aidy Roxburgh, Ethan Hartshorn, Joe Piggott, Josh Hancock, Iwan Roberts (AJ Kandeke, 86)
Subs not used: Zac Prior, Troy Bourne
Witton Albion: Cameron Terry, Jack Walls, Jacob Hamman, Wade Rutherford, Geffry Ebhote, Danny Kerr (C), Joe Edwards (Kyle King, 87), James Lawrie, Freddy Garbutt, James Steele (Ben Holmes, 74), Tom Hoyle (Lewis Crane, 90)
Subs not used: Ghen Orhenomare, Damola Sotona
Goals: Steele (22′), Garbutt (35′), Hamman (37′)
Attendance: 637