On a day that saw their lingering title hopes blown away by Roach Dynamos victory over Failsworth, Prestwich kept alive their promotion ambitions with what ultimately turned out to be a comfortable win against fourth placed Wyresdale.
The win was far from stress free though as Wyresdale scored two goals in two minutes to recover from a 2-0 half time deficit to equalise early in the second half to make for a really tense closing period for Prestwich.
Despite missing a raft of regular players due to the bank holiday it had all started so well for Prestwich, playing on the front foot they set about Wyresdale from the start taking a 14 minute lead in a move initiated by left back Mike Kirkley on the left, he squared it to winger Mike Neary lurking on the right hand edge of the box, Neary took a touch and struck a beautiful shot into the top right hand corner.
Prestwich continued in the ascendency with stand in keeper Chapman only sporadically troubled by a rare Wyrsedale forage, but nerves began to jangle amidst the usual tale of missed chances in a game they simply had to win.
Amongst the many misses the normally reliable Steve Murty missed a header from point blank range, Paul Taylor having headed a corner back across goal.
It looked like Sean Haslam had settled the nerves just before half time when a long ball from Richard Steadman picked him out on the shoulder of the last man, Haslam did well to turn him and fire a rocket of a shot high into the net from 25 yards.
Perhaps over confident on the resumption a malaise set in about Prestwich with too many sloppy passes and a loss of cohesion to their game. Wyresdale took full advantage, first on 50 mins a carless ball by Buckley aimed at right back Chris Hudson bursting forward on the overlap was intercepted by their tricky winger, having won the ball he slalomed past several statuesque Prestwich players before unleashing an unstoppable shot past Chapman.
Two minutes later he repeated the feat in a very similar style to leave Prestwich stunned.
To their credit the Prestwich boys didn’t panic and simply re-grouped and set about playing their normal game, but Wyresdale now had something to hold on to though and they were determined to do it defending their point with great tenacity as the tension raised.
Relief came on the hour when Prestwich’s skilful waspish Spanish striker charged down an attempted clearance some 30 yards out to the left of goal and showed tremendous strength and determination to hold of several players on his run towards goal before stroking it past the keeper from close range.
The goal broke Wyresdales resistance and Haslam went on to complete his hat trick, the firstly with a fine individual goal on 80 mins and then a deflected shot on 85.
The win sets the scene for a tremendously exciting last weekend with Prestwich needing to at least match Rossendale’s result in order to go up in second place, with them away to the champions Roach whilst Rossendale are at Failsworth.
Failure would bring tremendous disappointment for either side as one of them could potentially fail with 63 points to their credit which on any other season would at worst bring promotion and second place, but more often than not the title such has been the dominance by these three teams this season with a 17 point gap between third and fourth place.
Let’s hope it’s not Prestwich that suffer!!
