Ashton Athletic v AFC Liverpool, 23rd August 2022

I wasn't planning to come out to Brocstedes Park in the evening. I had something very important that day, my 19th wedding anniversary.

But around 7pm ish after me and the Mrs were finishing our meal in a Turkish Restaurant in Warrington, having gone bowling earlier. She signalled a willingness to go home and chill. I saw an opportunity to sneak out and drive the half hour from Warrington to Ashton Athletic FC. 

I knew I would miss at least 15 minutes though. In fact I was 25 minutes late, and pleasantly surprised to see the turnstile still fully operational. On greeting Alan Harrison, Billy and Sandra, I realised Jesse Dowling on his return (having re-signed) had scored a brilliant goal to give us the lead.

On joining other supporters behind the goal, I was told Jesse's goal was against the run of play.  In the portion of the first half I witnessed, I saw Jack McGovern called upon to make a fine save, I saw our woodwork rattled, and quite a lot of pressure from the home side to be honest. A number of our supporters were conceding that our lead was not really deserved.

After the break we did show more and came close on a couple of occasions to extend our lead. One occasion saw one of our attackers charge down a defender's clearance, causing the ball to deflect towards goal. The Ashton keeper got back to flick it wide.

Another chance was created single-handedly by Elliott Hughes. After tackling a defender, he ran in on goal only to see his shot deflect wide.

At 1-0 Ashton Athletic were certainly not out of it, and as time slowly progressed our supporters got more and more nervous. The game went into injury time and surely there wouldn't be that much?

On 95 minutes the home side in pushing for the equaliser got caught on the break. Olly Sanderson-Rigby got played through and finished for 2-0. Surely that would be that. 

But then almost immediately the home side worked a chance in the inside left channel, and the shot across Jack McGovern's goal went into Jack's left hand corner and we were back straightaway to a single-goal advantage. Now surely with 96 mins on the clock, there would hardly be a chance to even restart? Wrong. The game continued for another two minutes with the home side piling on the pressure again. The referee was getting a lot of stick for keeping the game going, finding injury time none of us could agree with.

The final whistle finally went, we got the points. But the criticism of the referee and his phantom injury time continued. I remarked to Greg Armstrong that I was struggling to think of a game in our club's history where we had so much injury time! 

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