WALSALL 3 CITY 3
League Division 1
25th March 1989
attendance 7,562
Scorers
City Oldfield(41), Moulden(45 & 46)
Walsall Saville(19 & 85), Rimmer(30)
Ref F Roberts
City Dibble, Lake, Taggart, Gayle, Megson, Redmond, White, Moulden, Gleghorn, McNab, Oldfield – subs Bradshaw(33), I Brightwell(unused)
Walsall Barber, Dornan, Hawker, Shakespeare, Forbes, Smith, Pritchard, Rimmer, Saville, Goodwin, Naughton – subs Mower, Rees
FROM AN ARTICLE BY GEOFF ALLMAN PUBLISHED IN THE WALSALL PROGRAMME 23RD JANUARY 1999
This was a thrilling enough game and in many ways did us great credit as we more than matched City who sat second in the table, with ourselves second from bottom and some 43 points behind.
Andy Saville had just joined us from Hull City and he made a tremendous start in his first game, giving the visitors defence many
problems and after just 19 minutes he raced on to a through ball from Phil Hawker to drill the ball past Andy Dibble in the City goal. We were playing some of our best football of the season and on the half-hour Stuart Rimmer got his fifth goal in nine games as Saville put him through and he held off the challenge of Steve Redmond to double our advantage.
As Andy Dornan hit another powerful shot at goal, Dibble seemed to injure himself diving for the ball. He left the field in some pain and striker Nigel Gleghorn donned the gloves. Amazingly this incident seemed to turn the game in the visitors favour and with five minutes to go before the break David Oldfield scored his first goal for City as Fred Barber failed to hold a Paul Moulden shot. Moments later the scores were level as Moulden himself found the net following a David White cross.
The game had really slipped away from us and within minutes of the restart hesitation from Andy Dornan and Mark Goodwin let in Oldfield who found Moulden unmarked and the lively front-man fired home from the edge of the penalty area. lt should have been 4-2 on 50 minutes as City won a penalty after Dornan was adjudged to have handled, however Neil McNab’s spot-kick was smartly saved by Barber.
We took encouragement from this but Gleghorn was revelling in his new role between the posts, denying both Saville and Rimmer with fine saves. We did manage to beat him with just five minutes to go as Rimmer broke clear and crossed perfectly for Saville to head home at the far post and so end a tremendous game with honours even.