Cheadle Town 3-3 Ashton Town

Cheadle staged a late fightback to earn a richly-deserved point in this six-goal thriller.

Despite the six goals, it ended up 0-0 at half-time. Chief contributor to this statistic was the Ashton Town 'keeper who made a hatful of astonishing world-class saves; without them Cheadle would have been away-and-gone by half-time. On 15 minutes he blocked a point-blank effort from Brocky; on 24 minutes he did enough to put Deano off from scoring as he rolls his shot just wide of the post after being put through one-on-one with the 'keeper; on 35 minutes he made a superb one-handed save from Brocky's header; on the stroke of half-time he palmed away a stinging piledriver from Lindon. You get the point - he was starting to get right on our nerves. Given that, and the fact that Heathy had to be replaced early due to an injury, you got the feeling it wasn't going to be Cheadle's day.

Just as they did in Eccleshall last week, Cheadle were caught cold at the start of the second half. Ashton went forward, the ball spun up to Howard who hit a clean and fast daisy-cutter into the Cheadle net. A minute later and the Ashton 'keeper made another one-handed save. The Pole and Polardin heads were beginning to shake with disbelief. Another incredible save from Deano after 52 minutes and the disbelief was starting to turn into foul language!

Just to rub things in, it got worse for Cheadle on the 63 minute mark. Howard - him again - arrowed a lovely free-kick into the roof of the net. Two-nil down...and surely down-and-out.

It remained that way until about 15 minutes to go, when all manner of goal mayhem broke loose. Deano got Cheadle back into it with the club's first converted penalty this season - I managed to get this on my camera. (I'll post the video once I've got it uploaded to YouTube). However, just as if he hadn't annoyed us enough, Howard got his hat-trick five minutes later when he cut in from the right and planted a shot wide of Mellor's grasp and into the net. 1-3 down and with 13 minutes remaining: surely that was it?

Au contraire. Cheadle are made of sterner stuff at the moment. Before we could lament another defeat by Ashton Town, Arron Riley had collected the ball straight from the kick-off, ran the entire length of the Ashton half and tucked a shot under the 'keeper's body.

Game on. Cheadle laid siege on the Ashton net and forced a series of corners towards the final minutes of the match. One of them was to produce the equaliser as Kempo rose and planted a header into the top corner. Not that things were quite over as Mellor made a great save to deny an Ashton winner in injury time.

It may have been two points dropped but a draw was the very least Cheadle deserved. £3.50 to watch a match like this - that's value with a capital 'V', my friends....

TEAM: Mellor, A Roberts, McDonagh, Brocklehurst (B Roberts), Kempton, Smith, Heath (D Martin), Lindon, Flanagan (Stewart), Hussain, Riley. Subs: D Martin, Stewart, B Roberts.