A first half injury time penalty from Peter Williams was enough to move Congleton Town into the Northern Premier League West playoff places.
The Bears were awarded the spot kick in the second minute of time added on when Manny Duku handled Williams’ corner before the ball fell to defender Josh Hall who put his effort away. However, the referee Mark Bates said that he had already awarded the spot kick before Hall had scored.
It didn’t matter in reality because up stepped Williams who made no mistake in driving the ball over Jack Rose and into the net for what turned out to be the game’s only goal.
After the break, Bears player-manager Richard Duffy marshalled his defence expertly as the Pitmen tried to find a way back into the game. They even brought on last season’s Northern Premier League West’s top goal scorer in Rob Stevenson and, despite the former Leek Town man showing some brilliance up top, he couldn’t engineer an equaliser.
In the end, it was a fantastic result for Congleton, We probably didn’t get to see the normal free-flowing football we typically see from the Bears but the spirit and determination to collect all three points shone through which probably made it even better.
After the match, we spoke to Richard Duffy who gave us his post-match reaction and some rather interesting thoughts on the attitude of the Hednesford players at full-time, well worth a listen!
