I agree with Mal's sentiments above. A scrappy game and a very poor performance from Rovers. I can't be too disappointed with the result as a point was all we deserved. Southport battled hard and deserved their draw, and actually caused our defence a few problems for a period of fifteen minutes in the second half. I think it was bad time to play them as their new assistant seemed to have them fired up and better organised defensively. However, even taking that into account it was a disjointed, lethargic display from Rovers and we only seriously troubled the opposition keeper in the last ten minutes of the match. All the things we have been doing on this winning run - passing the ball quickly, moving off the ball, pressing the opposition - we failed to do and Southport seemed to win the majority of the fifty-fifty challenges.
Midfield was the major problem. I have been saying for weeks that Jeff Hughes should be a regular starter in the middle and today showed why. None of the midfield trio had good games, but Maynard was the spare man who was in possession most of the time. We needed him to get passing moves going but his distribution was very poor and he resorted it to lumping it more often than not. As a result, the service to the front players was non-existent, certainly in the first half. It was only when Hughes was moved into the middle by Brabin in the last twenty minutes (the correct move, but one which came too late) that we started to create and their keeper made two great saves from Cook and Kirby towards the end to deny us a, probably undeserved, winner. There just was not enough creativity in the midfield today and I think either Connor Jennings or Hughes should have been moved centrally far earlier in the match.
There were also signs of tiredness in the front three, and with Southport defending so deep in the first period the lack of width in the side was a problem. Yes, Brabin did eventually make changes but I thought they should have been made much earlier, possibly at half time. The change made by Andy Bishop to introduce Louis Almond had a far bigger impact on the game than our substitutions. I think the number of the games played by the first eleven in recent weeks caught up with us today, and Brabin certainly has some selection problems ahead of Monday. Jeff Hughes would certainly have to come back into midfield in my view, but I think there may have to be changes further forward.
It was a day when virtually all of our players were seriously below par, and the man of the match was Jeff Hughes by some distance. The one positive we can take from the match is that we would certainly have lost it last season having turned in that kind of display.
Credit should be given also to the travelling SWA. To take more than 2,000 fans to an away match in non-league football is remarkable, and I did not detect a hint of trouble.
