Stalemate does Southside few favours

The Ballymena boys will feel particularly aggrieved after letting a two-goal lead slip but the end result does neither side any favours in their attempts to overhaul runaway leaders Northend United.

Had it not been for a couple of good saves from keeper Lewis Erwin, Southside would have gone behind but somehow on 25 minutes Southside took the lead much against the run of play. From a corner Kyle Jackson headed home to give Southside the vital first goal.

This certainly made the heads of the visitors drop and Southside took advantage when a perfect pass from Sam McNiece released Ryan Corrigan who showed great composure to calmly side foot the ball into the corner of the net to give the Ballymena side a flattering two goal lead.

Southside started the second half looking for the third goal but to their credit the visitors were not going to give this up. Josh McCready unwell for the past few days had to leave the field of play which was a big blow for the home team.

A break down the left saw what was clearly a case of the Glendowan winger running the ball well over the dead ball line for a by ball but the referee was unsighted and as the visitors played on Southside stopped and a defender unfortunately flicked the ball into his own net thinking it was a Southside goal kick. A real calamity of errors by the official and the Southside defence who forgot the golden rule in football of ‘play to the whistle blows’.

This gave Glendowan a lifeline with 10 minutes remaining. Southside still looked capable of seeing the game out but again with only minutes remaining the ball was needlessly given away near the half way line and from this the visitors broke and crossed for an unmarked Glendowan attacker to equalise.

Southside: Erwin, Kirk, Henry, Logan(C), Graham, McNiece, McCready, R Stewart, Corrigan, Jackson, Bonnes, Hamill, J Stewart, McDowell, Hamill,