O'Shea's late goal makes Sports pay for poor display

New College Swindon came from behind to beat Sports 2-1 in Saturday’s Division One West clash at Addison Road.

In front of a big crowd Sports produced their worst performance of the season. While the visitors offered very little threat, they took their only clear-cut chances and defended with real commitment.

Sports rarely tested the New College keeper throughout the 90 minutes, James Montague blazed over and Callum Convey had two low efforts saved. But other than that, there were only some mistimed headers at corners which threatened to break the deadlock before halftime.

Sports took the lead three minutes of the restart when Charlie Hill controlled the ball well and fired an unstoppable shot across the keeper into the top corner of the net. But Sports continued to be wasteful in the final third.

New College drew level in the 58th minute with their first clear chance. Kane Howcutt’s shot was saved by Adam Rimmer but the striker netted from the rebound despite Conor Grant’s efforts to keep the ball out.

Sports went all out for the win, bringing on Andrew Stidder, Joe Eyre and Mike Spaull. But the visitors won it in the 84th minute when the Sports’ defence failed to deal with a long ball and O’Shea delicately lobbed the stranded Rimmer.

Sports remain second but the chasing pack all have games in hand and are cloing in.

But there is no stopping Ardley United after they raced to their ninth straight victory.

The leaders beat Shrivenham 2-0 on Saturday.

Conor Harris gave Ardley a 17th minute lead and Deon Gallacher doubled his side’s advantage in the 56th minute.