Guisborough Town 0, North Shields 4 (Northern League – Division One)

A FOUR-GOAL home defeat sounds like a real hammering but, although they were well beaten in the end, a spirited Guisborough Town kept battling to the end of one of those games when absolutely nothing went right for the luckless Priorymen. In fact, it was Guisborough who made most of the running in the first 20 minutes but they just couldn’t force the breakthrough goal.

James Beauchamp, Guisborough’s recent signing from Darlington, was prominent and after only five minutes he came mightily close to giving his side the lead when he got in a superb looping header but it just cleared Shields’ bar.

After 23 minutes and completely against the run of play, Shields broke away and a melee ensued in the Guisborough goalmouth which ended with Shields striker Paul Van-Zanduliet poking the ball home from close range.

Less than a minute later Guisborough suffered a setback when loan signing Joey Hope, who the day before had had his loan period extended for another month, had to leave the pitch with a muscle strain to be replaced by George Waites.

In the 34th minute, Shields doubled their lead to 2-0 in controversial fashion when a Guisborough defender was adjudged to have pushed a visiting attacker in the penalty area and the referee pointed to the spot. Dan Wilson converted the penalty into the right-hand corner, just beyond Guisborough ‘keeper Robert Dean’s despairing dive. Three minutes later Guisborough had a great chance to pull a goal back before the break but a superbly flighted cross from Callum Marton from the right was clipped narrowly wide by JJ Bartliff.

Undeterred, Guisborough made a big effort in the first 15 minutes of the second half to force a breakthrough but they could not find the net, and Shields striker Wilson lashed home a fierce shot for his second goal and 3-0 to the Robins.

In the 70th minute, with Guisborough still battling on gamely, Beauchamp cleverly made space for himself and fired in a powerful shot but the Shields ‘keeper flung himself to his right for a fingertip save. Five minutes later Shields got a fourth goal which just about summed up Guisborough’s bad luck all afternoon when ‘keeper Dean made a brilliant save, but following a scramble after the ball went loose substitute defender James Dillon in trying to clear unfortunately put the ball into his own net.

Guisborough Town manager Steve Bell said: “I told the players after the game that we were effectively beaten by one North Shields individual player, their number nine Dan Wilson. We just couldn’t get anywhere near him for the whole 90 minutes. That said, quite simply we were not good enough overall.”

There was a healthy KGV attendance of 261 and the deserved victory for Shields – their ninth in ten games during October – kept them well in the title hunt at third in the table, while Guisborough languish in the bottom half in 15th place. Tomorrow Guisborough Town play newcomers to the league Redcar Athletic at Green Lane, kick-off 3pm.