Cleethorpes Town 1-3 Dunston UTS

Cleethorpes Town 1-3 Dunston UTS

Northern Premier League (North-East Division)

Wednesday 24th January 2024

This was one of those nights which Cleethorpes Town will quickly want to forget all about as they were comfortably put to the sword by a ruthless Dunston team.

After a point on the road at Hebburn on Saturday in which Heath Richardson was MOTM, pulled off half-a-dozen decent saves and earned lots of plaudits (even though I wasn’t there word has got round about how good his performance was), there was nothing the on-loan Bradford ‘keeper could do in this game to keep the ball out as the Cleethorpes defending left a lot to be desired.

The first goal came inside 10 minutes when Dunston’s right-winger showed Dan Gallimore inside and put a cross into the box that was turned into the net by Rich Coulson, and with Cleethorpes still sleeping a few minutes later, nobody whatsoever in a black and blue shirt switched onto a short-corner routine which culminated in Josh King stabbing the ball home at the near-post to make it 2-0 and really cement Dunston’s advantage.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the visitors from the North-East then went and got a third goal thanks to a good finish on the spin by Jack Maskell which was put low and hard into the bottom corner after a ball in from the left-hand side.

So at 3-0 down with 20 minutes still not even on the clock, it was already ‘Game Over’ and most inside the ground were probably wondering how many it might end up!

Despite no further goals on the night for Dunston, they continued to look good - especially their No.7 who was excellent and one of the best wide players I’ve seen at this level in a while, but a couple of changes at half-time (including the introduction of Max Adamson) did breathe a new lease of life into Cleethorpes in the second half.

The intensity improved, they started getting forward more and posing a few questions but struggled to convert that into too many chances as Dunston defended well and the visiting ‘keeper did all the little bits really well when he was needed.

It wasn’t until the last 10 minutes that Cleethorpes did conjure up something to smile about. Max Adamson should have had a penalty when he was knocked over inside the box and although the linesman just a few yards away was flagging, the referee (some 20-30 yards behind play) overruled him and waved play on instead; cue criticism, but less than 30 seconds later in pretty much the same passage of play, the ball was in the net anyway thanks to a decent finish by Josh Walker.

It summed up the officials (who weren’t the best) that in the last few minutes, they gave two out of three corner decisions the wrong way - affecting both teams, but despite them, nobody can deny this was a well-deserved for Dunston who were comfortably the better team.

They got the job done early on, scored some good goals, played well and all credit to them because they looked like a very good team on the night and if they play like this they’re certainly going to have every chance of getting promoted at the end of the season.

For Cleethorpes, the phrase ‘work in progress’ springs to mind, albeit Max Adamson will be pleased with how he’s settled into life and on the back of a decent cameo performance from the bench at Hebburn on Saturday, plus this one, it probably won’t be too long before he’s in the starting line-up.