11th October 1999
11th October 1999 STUART THOM could be out until Christmas after breaking his collarbone in Athletic's dramatic victory over Luton on Saturday.
The unlucky defender, who recently returned from a badly-fractured toe, was injured in a bizarre accident with goalkeeper Gary Kelly. Thom was flattened by his team-mate in the build-up to Luton's goal and, after four minutes of treatment, left the pitch on a stretcher. He was immediately taken to hospital, but doctors were equally concerned that he was suffering from shock.
The 22-year-old was detained for two nights and yesterday underwent further X-rays. As he is also suffering bad shoulder pain, there are worries that the damage is even worse than first thought. Thom looks sure to be out for at least eight weeks, with his X-ray results adding the potential for more. The freak injury means Athletic, who are already without Shaun Garnett, could be woefully short of cover for the trip to Cardiff this weekend. Garnett is due to see a specialist tonight after missing four matches with a stomach strain. If the verdict isn't good, Athletic will either re-arrange their defence or hand a full league debut to Mark Hotte or Ben Futcher. Craig Dudley was in line to play against Luton until he went down with a nasty virus.
Young
'keeper John Mohan, with whom Dudley shares digs, is suffering from the
same illness. Yet, despite bad news on the fitness front, Athletic had
every reason to feel upbeat this morning. Saturday's injury-time winner
took them off the bottom of the table for the first time all season, leaving
Colchester, Blackpool and Cambridge below them on goal difference. Manager
Andy Ritchie said: "It was a good result and things don't look quite as
bad when you move up a place or two. "But we have to maintain some consistency
before I start getting carried away. "This was only one match and we have
a very difficult trip to Cardiff coming up this weekend." Athletic reserves
are at home to Bury tomorrow night in the Manchester Senior Cup.
Latics
respond in style after boss’s half-time rage
AS
Athletic have stumbled from one bad result to another this season, the
first murmurs of discontent have begun to build up around Andy Ritchie. Yet
Athletic’s manager, as well as celebrating Mark Allott’s injury-time winner,
could spend Saturday night toasting his own vital contribution to this
second victory of the campaign. It was
Ritchie who decided to bring David McNiven in from the cold and he was
rewarded with the striker’s first senior goal for 18 months. More
important, it was Ritchie who responded to an utterly appalling 45 minutes
by giving his players the half-time roasting of their lives. This
was such a telling off that, by all accounts, Athletic will have to call
in the decorators to replace the paint he stripped from the walls. The
cocktail of tea and vitriol certainly did the trick, though, for it inspired
the kind of football which left one wondering why Athletic spent so long
at the bottom of the table. At the heart
of everything was Allott, who was a frustrated figure before the break
and bereft of any kind of support or service.
The
striker’s answer was to conduct a one-man attacking crusade which was inventive,
constantly threatening and helped to coax his team-mates — most notably
McNiven — out of their collective shell. His
fifth goal of the season, which arrived three minutes into stoppage time,
typified the spirit he showed throughout. Ritchie
has called frequently for his players to be “willing to die” in the penalty
area and Allott’s brave header came amid the flying boots of a Luton defence
at most desperate. he goal also saved
the blushes of goalkeeper Gary Kelly, whose almighty brainstorm so nearly
lost his side two precious points. if the
goal he conceded had not been so potentially costly, it would have been
comic. Team-mate Stuart Thom certainly
wasn’t laughing after being bulldozed to the ground as Kelly tried to make
amends for a substandard goal-kick. Nor
was the ‘keeper, but it’s only fair to point out that his was a rare lapse
in an otherwise excellent season. The
difference between the two halves really was amazing and, though Athletic
ultimately deserved their win, they were lucky to still be in the game.
If
Luton’s finishing had not been so wayward, the result would have been virtually
settled within the first 15 minutes. The
visitors had two clear chances and a free-kick which was inches off target
before their anxious hosts — hopelessly disjointed and unable to escape
from their own half — had even approached the other penalty area. Here
was the explanation for Luton’s record of only three goals in six away
games. And it doesn’t help when one of your strikers, Stuart Douglas, has
gone 18 matches without hitting the target. Once
Luton fell into the same malaise as Athletic, the first half became tedious
on an epic scale. It was the King Lear
of boring football, the War And Peace of wastes of time. The
single cheer came when Sweden scored against Poland in their Euro 2000
qualifier and the only other bonus was that Boundary Park has plenty of
grass for the sleepy spectator to watch growing. The
visitors’ early openings fell to former Northern Ireland striker Phil Gray,
who lifted his shot over the bar, and the hapless Douglas. Wing-back
Matthew Taylor, an enormously promising 17-year-old, came agonisingly close
with a free-kick and later saw a low shot palmed on to the post by Kelly.
Athletic
were totally punchless but, once Ritchie had said his piece — and at such
a volume that it could be heard in the next-door dressing room — they switched
from the ridiculous to the sublime. Allott
began the assault when he wriggled clear on the edge of the box and hit
an awkward shot which was turned away by goalkeeper Nathan Abbey. Thom’s
goalbound header was deflected for a corner and Allott hit the outside
of a post with a drive from 15 yards. Allott
then did well to bring another save from Abbey, only for David McNiven
to blast the rebound hopelessly wide with the goal gaping. On
the hour, Paul Rickers was denied by Stuart Fraser’s last-ditch tackle
and the one-way traffic continued to flow when Abbey blocked Allott’s powerful
header.Finally, after 65 minutes, Allott’s
sterling work paid off. His through ball
found David McNiven and, as Luton appealed for offside, the recalled forward
cleverly prodded the ball to one side of the on-rushing Abbey before darting
around him and finishing from 18 yards. With
Gray off injured, Athletic looked comfortable with their lead. But,
only five minutes from time, Kelly had his rush of blood. Even
though his weak goal-kick picked out Matthew Spring in space, the pass
forward seemed to be covered by Thom. Kelly
charged off his line regardless and, after laying out the big defender
instead of stopping the ball, he could do more than watch Luton substitute
Neil Midgley stroke home the equaliser from a tight angle. The
blow could have shattered Athletic’s confidence, but they instead gathered
themselves for another big push. With
one of the few bad fouls of a free-kick ridden game, Fraser brought down
Andrew Holt near the corner flag. The
trusty right boot of John Sheridan sent the ball spinning to the far post
and Allott stooped to bury his header from six yards. Smiles
all round, then. And — perhaps more than he lets on — a big sigh of relief
from Andy `Mr Angry’ Ritchie.
Players
ignored training ground orders to grab last-gasp win
ATHLETIC’S
last-gasp winner was a goal which, based on their training-ground instructions,
they should never have scored. Ironically,
manager Andy Ritchie revealed that his players were almost ordered to abandon
what they were doing before Mark Allott struck. He
said: “We practice free-kicks from that area week in, week out. But they
didn’t set it up like we do in training and they totally ignored what we
tell them to do. “Bill Urmson was even
going to get up and tell them to change it, but I said we should let them
get on with it because they do what they want anyway. “It’s
not just us. When we played Notts County last week, their manager (Sam
Allardyce) asked me if we ever practiced free-kicks. “I
said we did, but he told me he doesn’t bother any more because his players
never take any notice of him.” If Ritchie’s
directions had not quite gone to plan in that instance, he certainly made
a crucial intervention at half-time. The
manager thought Athletic had hit the lowest point of his 15-month reign
and admitted that a few expletives had been thrown around the dressing
room. He said: “In the first half, we
needn’t have bothered turning up. I thought Luton must have been playing
in blue we passed to them so often. “It
was the worst we have played since I took over. “There
was no battle, no fight and we hardly tackled or challenged anyone. “Afterwards
we showed some spirit and that was the big difference. “But
we still tried to give it away by doing stupid things like playing the
ball around in all the wrong areas when we should have put our boot through
it. “Gary Kelly has held up his hands
for their goal and we had that little bit of luck at the end. “But
this is one result and it does no more than take us off the bottom. It’s
also spoiled by the injury to Stuart Thom.”
Luton
boss Lennie Lawrence was bitterly disappointed with the result, believing
his young side’s lack of experience had “shone like a beacon”. He
said: “That well-worn phrase — a game of two halves — has never been so
apt. “I can’t remember a team being as
nervous as Oldham were in the first 20 minutes, but we didn’t have the
ruthless killer instinct to exploit it. “Then
their manager gave them the mother and father of rollickings and it galvanised
them into action. “Andy Ritchie was the
single biggest influence on that game and, in the second half, we took
an absolute battering — the biggest we have had for months. “But
we also shot ourselves in the foot with the second goal because we knew
it would come down to a free-kick or a corner. “If
you can stop Oldham getting that supply line, your chances of conceding
a goal are cut by at least 50 per cent.”