Monmouth Town 0 Barry Town United 3

MONMOUTH Town’s Kingfishers continued their poor start to the season with a grim defeat against newly promoted Barry Town United on a glorious day at the sports ground that had Barry’s boisterous visiting support cheering and singing their way through the game and no doubt on the journey home.

Despite a perfect pitch, both sides were guilty of giving the ball away far too frequently than you’d expect at the second tier of Welsh football and although Town will miss departed Dan MacDonald, too many players had days they will want to forget.

Drew Fahiya who has played Welsh premier football with Port Talbot among others had pretty much the run of the right wing and his movement and pace caused all sorts of problems as Town dropped off their opponents seemingly with no sweat by former Cardiff City stalwart Damen Searle. The first goal was coming and on 22 minutes Fahiya drove infield, laid the ball across to Blatchford who fell over Alderdice’s outstretched leg and sent Slope the wrong way with the penalty.

Barry had other opportunities to score but woeful finishing kept the game evenly balanced and Town also had opportunities but in truth rarely troubled Bradley in the visitors goal. The comedy of errors that punctuated the first half was almost brought to a Tommy Cooper ending when Evans’ back pass was missed by Sloper and hit the post.

Things were no better in the second half although Sam Palmer made a good impression as a substitute, setting up Harrhy to smack the bar with a header and showing a range of skills that should have been infectious.

Unfortunately it didn’t rub off and from an attacking free kick on the edge of the box the Barry Town clearance was hashed and Barry were suddenly four against one bearing down on goal with no cavalry in sight. The inevitable result was a 2–0 lead.

Some other half chances went begging as the Kingfishers became more fractious and the visitors missed another two chances before again upending a defender and roiling a pass across for an unmarked player to settle the game.

An angry Town boss Andrew Smith was at a loss to explain the defeat.

“You cannot legislate for so many players playing so badly. We couldn’t pass, tackle, mark, run or communicate.”

The Kingfishers, sponsored by South Hereford Garages and Furniture Importers, are at home again this Saturday as they welcome Briton Ferry (2.30) and must start being hard to beat if they are to avoid a damaging relegation fight.