Steve Herbert: One minute of second half madness costs Crawley Town dearly
It should have ended up being the most remarkable of fairytales for Reds midfielder Jay Williams after he nodded in with a bandaged head to give Crawley a brilliant 72nd minute lead at Salford.
Instead we completely imploded with five minutes to go, conceding twice in a minute, with Salford’s winner coming straight from our own kick-off.
In a breathless encounter between two quality attacking teams, a point would have been an okay result, but we couldn’t even manage that as we blew a whole afternoon’s work in a mad 60-second spell.
Last season we witnessed some horrendous collapses at both Exeter (4-1 up) and Bolton (3-1 up) and although this game was never as commanding as those ones, you couldn’t help but think we’ve been here before on the road.
To the 168 Reds fans that travelled, it was a real kick in the teeth. The fans had been brilliant all afternoon, they certainly didn’t deserve that ending.
Neither did Jay Williams, whose unfortunate stray pass from kick-off led to the Ammies winner.
Jay has been superb since he’s come back from injury and it was an unfortunate moment, one he and the team will learn from.
As Scott Lindsey said in his post-match interview, he encourages the team to play, but sometimes if the ball’s not on then it’s okay to go back or go long to beat the press. On this occasion we played straight into Salford’s aggressive press and were punished in the cruellest way.
The team now have a bit of time off to recharge the batteries before we take on our near neighbours Bromley on Tuesday, December 9.
During that time you’d like to think striker Harry McKirdy will practice his penalties, after missing yet another at Salford. The miss happened straight after half-time and would have given Reds a 2-1 lead at that stage.
Someone mentioned Kabby Tshimanga had a brilliant record from the spot at Swindon. Surely it’s time for our No9 to take over spot kick duties. It’s something Scott Lindsey needs to seriously consider as these misses are starting to cost us big time.