BALTI SPORTS 1

SWANAGE T&H 1

BALTI Sports recovered from conceding after 14 seconds to earn a 1-1 draw with Swanage Town & Herston in their Dorset Premier League clash at Weymouth College.

Tommy Beard took advantage of slack play by Balti’s Sammy Nichols before unleashing a long-range drive that beat home goalkeeper Andy Nott with the match barely underway.

Swans’ Garan Bennett then had a shot cleared off the line as a lacklustre Sports’ side nearly fell 2-0 behind.

A shellshocked Balti only got into their stride midway through the first half but could not find an equaliser before the break, prompting strong words from boss Marco Nott.

And their admonishment paid dividends when, on 49 minutes, Danny Andrews swept up possession from a corner before crossing for captain Ryan Dovell to nod home from six yards.

Both sides had chances to win the game thereafter, with Balti twice spurning gilt-edged opportunities.

Ricky Lane was put through on goal by Ethan Devaney but the striker elected for power rather than placement and lashed his effort off the top of the bar.

Andrews went on to waste a one-on-one in shooting straight at the Swanage keeper as Balti were forced to settle for a share of the points, extending their unbeaten run to nine games.

Speaking to Echosport, boss Nott admitted his side needed to find a way to win after drawing five of those nine fixtures.

He said: “It’s frustrating. We had some clear-cut chances were we should have won, then they had a couple of chances. I guess it was a fair result. It’s probably the worst I’ve seen us play in the first half this season, they scored within 14 seconds. It was a case of walking through our midfield and shooting from distance.

“We just didn’t get going at all until the half-hour mark – we started to play some reasonably good stuff. I had some words at half-time and they woke up and scored the equaliser.”

Commenting on the number of draws his charges have been involving, Nott felt one positive was that Sports are “hard to beat”.

He said: “It seems to be the way we’re doing it.

“We’ve only lost one game out of 11, including cups. It’s positive we’re getting some results but we need to start picking up wins. We seem to be hard to beat at the moment which is a good habit to get in to.”

Balti: A Nott, Walker, Dovell, Roberts, O’Shaughnessy (Proffitt 75), L Taylor (Dean 60), Devaney, Nichols, McClements (Burton 60), Lane, Andrews. Subs not used: M Nott

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