What a feeling. A goal down going into the last five minutes, and the faces in the crowd tell the same old hard luck story - hit the woodwork twice but again we've throw it away with a silly mistake. Then an over-hit cross is nodded back into the mêlée - it misses the big man but falls at the feet of our Baltic talisman. He turns one way, then the other, leaving three defenders wrong-footed and bang - roof of the net. We're level. Got out of jail with a point. But wait, here we come again. With the crowd now baying for blood on newly found belief, Scunny try too hard to stem the tide and clatter the Latvian. Free-kick, twenty-five yards out, dead centre. "This is a chance," mumbles the man behind me, and Wayne Carlisle has the right foot to realise it. From where I am stood, all I see is the ball disappear behind the flailing goalkeeper, and I know it's there. Brilliant. When it's been three months since your last home win, this sort of afternoon answers all those nagging doubts that one half of your conscience has been throwing at you, such as why you're spending all this time and money to watch a load of no-hopers. Well, on that performance they are far from rubbish, so you can keep your Saturdays trawling round the Mall, wasting all that time and money. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who stayed a while to catch the Screen Soccer highlights in the bar after the game, as some of us just had to see that winning goal again. Seeing the action again up on the big screen, I noticed that Astafjevs had a better game than I thought, as he seemed to be everywhere and getting on the end of every cross. Also his goal appeared to be more of a scrappy affair at first glance, but the replay showed it was a fine display of close control and finishing inside the six-yard box, as once he had fooled the defenders he still had to rifle it past the bodies on the line. Despite being the darling of most of the Mem, Vitas has never been the first name on each of his managers' team sheets here and so you feel as though he has constantly been fighting battles just to get into the side. With Graham Hyde on his way back, he could be the man to make way again seeing as Ray Graydon has shown a preference for Kevin Street on the left since he arrived from Northwich, although the new signing was employed in the middle last week, and any boss would be a fool to leave a player like Astafjevs out after that performance. Vitas' goal was a cracker but that strike from Carlisle was absolutely fantastic, and he showed yet again what a cool head he has when others would have blazed the ball over the South Stand. Let us not forget that he was under similar pressure up at Scunthorpe in August when he converted a last gasp penalty to earn a point, a feat which he repeated against Boston more recently. It was great to see our three points catapult us up the table, although Exeter went and won a point at Scunny in the week to pin us back a place. While we face Boston and Carlisle next, our Devon rivals are up against Macclesfield and Shrewsbury, so both sides will be eyeing a few points after recent revivals. © Chris Chappell - Friday 24th January 2003 Back to Index