Daisy Hill staged a second-half fightback to earn a point at home against Holker Old Boys in the North West Counties First Division North on Saturday.
A poor first-half showing left the Cutters 3-1 down at half time but a late rally with goals from Harry Forshaw and Declan Baldwin gained a point, leaving assistant manager Chris Brown pleased.
“When you’re 3-0 down, I think you’d take a point, but obviously it’s disappointing when you’ve seen how many chances we actually created in the second-half,” said Brown.
“It’s pleasing to get a point in the end, but we’re also disappointed we put ourselves in that position.
“I thought we were really strong for the majority of the game, if you take the first 25 minutes out of it, and I thought the lads who came off the bench made a difference.
“That’s what you need in this league, you need an impact from the bench, it’s not just about the starting XI.
“We were so disappointed at half time because we know what the lads can produce. We see it week in week out in training.
“For the whole of the second half, we were dominant, but the lads just need to do that from the start rather than be chasing games.
“We started really slowly. It’s the first time that our back four has been put together, and we had three lads that don’t normally play coming in, and in the first five or 10 minutes, you could see that. But credit to them, they recovered well and they defended well.
“The Holker striker (Tyler Spence) was a handful. He’s a very good player, he came in deep, and was running behind, but once we got to grips with him, we were able to push higher up the park, build pressure and sustain that pressure. And that’s where the goals and the chances came from.
“I thought that the Holker keeper was outstanding throughout the game. He made six or seven fantastic saves and his handling was great.
“Holker were deservedly 3-1 up at half time, and I think we deserved to get the goals back with our second-half performance. If we’d come away with nothing, it would have been an absolute travesty. So, I’d say it’s fair result, but a disappointing one for us.”
Holker Old Boys got off to the best start possible as Tyler Spence raced through on goal and slotted past Jude Smith to put the Stags one up inside the first 60 seconds of the match.
The Stags put themselves two ahead on the nine-minute mark as Luke Davey found himself free on the edge of the box and smashed the ball into the bottom-right corner.
The Cutters were cut open for a third time, as on 31 minutes a long ball was misjudged by the Daisy defence and allowed Spence to latch on to the ball and strike a half-volleyed effort into the far side-netting to put Holker 3-0 up.
Only two minutes later the Cutters got their lifeline back into the match as Max Bardsley-Rowe slotted home after Liam Sheppard’s effort was parried out by Matt Bailey.
Daisy came out of the blocks strong after the interval and nearly scored four minutes into the second half.
Fionn Murphy’s lobbed effort from 40 yards was miraculously cleared off the line by the retreating Holker defender and Sheppard’s follow-up effort was saved by Bailey.
The Cutters continued to put pressure on the Holker defence and Forshaw finally broke through.
He picked up the ball and fired an effort from the edge of the box past Bailey at his near post to put the Cutters only one goal behind with 15 minutes to go.
Forshaw was at the heart of the action again as he won a penalty after being caught by a high foot.
Baldwin stepped up as the taker and sent Bailey the wrong way as he dispatched the penalty into the left-hand side-netting bringing the Cutters level in the 84th minute.
Daisy nearly scored the winner five minutes later as Bardsley-Rowe’s effort from an acute angle just clipped the outside of the post leaving both sides to settle for a point after a hectic 90 minutes.
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