Rushden & Diamonds 0 Forest Green Rovers 0

Match Report courtesy of Unofficial Rushden & Diamonds Website (1997-2001)

9th September 2000 – Nene Park (Attendance: 3325)

Diamonds Team: Turley, Mustafa, Underwood, Carey, Rodwell, Warburton, Butterworth, Brady, Jackson, Darby, Burgess.

Subs:Sigere, Mills, Setchell, Peters, Naylor

Webmasters MoM: Rodwell;

Match Report by Greg

Diamonds faced lowly placed Forest Green with yet another un-changed team for todays game with Razor and Unders still carrying injuries but Brian Talbot not wishing to change a winning team.

Forest Green had come for a draw and set their stall out accordingly, but Diamonds totally dominated the first half, a half that saw them have 14 chances on goal. How the half time score line remained at 0-0 is beyond belief. Chances were falling to Diamonds front men every few minutes as Diamonds tore Forest Green to shreds. Unfortunately for Diamonds though poor finishing, bad luck and good defending on the line the scoreline remained blank. Forest Green were restricted to a chance on 12 minutes that Billy Turley tipped over, and then right on half time ex-Diamond Adrian Foster cleverly slipped his marker only to shoot wide across goal with Billy Turley looking beaten.

Second half Forest Green continued with their battle plan, five across the middle of the park and just one upfront in an effort to stifle Diamonds feeding of the front men – and it worked. Diamonds were made to suffer frustration as the chances dried up. The best effort of the second half fell to Butts who had a magnificent goalbound header turned around the post by Nigel Spink. The substitution of Siggy for Duane Darby and Setch for Unders failed to add any sparks to the play and Diamonds spluttered to a final score of 0-0.

So four home points now dropped from the last two games and difficult away games coming up on Tuesday at Scarborough and Saturday at Woking.