Home keeper Steve Jones had little to do, with only two on-goal shots to stop, one a good one, a low drive from Leroy Chambers and one, to his embarrassment, that he did not. At the other end Stuart Coburn could do little to stop the three goals, one of which included a penalty on 9 minutes. He was kept very busy and, particularly in the second half made a number of splendid saves which did save some of Alty's face.

I am writing this report as John Laidlar, like many others was unable to make this long trip. The short notice, early start, distance and midnight return time meant that the Alty away support was at a low ebb, only 15 travelled on the supporters coach, (wrong, it was a mini-bus capably driven by SAFE's Alan Brotherton), and the number of independent travellers was down. I guess another reason was a feeling that Bishop Auckland were our bogie team and it was not a match we were going to win. Our team certainly gave that impression

Like our Saturday visit of a couple of weeks ago Bishop Auckland made us very welcome. How do they keep their bar prices so low? They underestimated the size of the crowd (guessing 300 and more than our last visit) as they ran out of programmes, having only ordered 70, and pies. There was no segregation but two police and a contingent of large Darlington stewards were present. However there was no suggestion of any crowd problem, indeed at the end of the game I saw two protagonists from Alty and Bishops who verbally sparred at the November 18th game chatting amicably and ending by saying see you next year!

One minor victory for web site diplomacy, John Covey Bishop Auckland web master had pointed out that they they did not take exception to the Alty chants referring to them as "cheating bastards" but not "cheating Geordie bastards" as they were not Geordies; a word in the right ear and the term Geordie was not in any of the Alty chants. I still want to know what to call them?

Altrincham started badly when Gary Talbot was lucky not to have conceded a penalty in the first minute. On 9 minutes, much to the obvious disgust of Stuart Coburn, striker David Mellanby, who was creating all sorts of problems for Alty, was brought down by Steve Hawes in the box and an uncontested penalty was awarded. The keeper dived the right way for Andrew Shaw's well taken shot but could not prevent the goal.

None of the substitutions made any difference to the control held by Bishop. On 65 minutes there was Alty's first decent shot when Leroy Chambers sent a low drive towards the corner of the goal but it was well saved by "out of work" Steve Jones. On 70 minutes Stuart Coburn made a good save but this was followed by a corner out of which Bishop's Jonathon Milroy scored (0-3). It really was one way traffic down the hill towards Alty's goal. On 73 minutes Alty's luck seemed to change. A free kick from Steve Hawes was picked up by Mark Maddox who somehow managed to send the ball goalwards.

Steve Jones caught the ball, dropped it and it went straight through his legs for an Alty goal. It was worth coming a long way to see the look of embarrassment on his face and the delight on that of Mark Maddox. Naively you would have thought that this lucky gift goal would inspire Alty to greater efforts to try to achieve a draw and extra time. But, no, they did not respond and in fact Bishop Auckland seemed to treat it as an insult and increased the pressure on the Alty to restore a more respectable score. It was only the efforts of Stuart Coburn, who made some very good saves, that kept the score at (1-3).