Hallen 2, Calne Town 2 (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Hallen 2, Calne Town 2

3:47pm Thursday 15th December 2005 in Football

Toolstation Premier Division:CALNE Town player-manager Robbie Lardner refused to slam his defence after two sloppy goals cost him the points on Saturday.

Lardner's side dominated at Hallen but his defence conceded two goals through a lack of concentration.

However, the player-manager defended his back line saying they had been one of the main reasons behind his side's positive start to the season.

Lardner said: "It's not just the defenders at fault but the circumstances.

"When we work so hard to get into the lead twice it's disappointing to concede the goals we did.

"I have no complaints with how we played, we worked hard and got ourselves in front.

"We played some good football and it was disappointing not to win."

Assistant manager Simon Hillier also backed the Calne defence.

He said: "We spoke in the changing room after the game and the lads commented that it felt like a defeat.

"We had some great individual performances on Saturday and if our defence had been more switched on then we would have had three points.

"But they have been our grounding this season and hopefully we can get back to how we have been defending. We want to keep clean sheets."

Gary Banks opened the scoring for Calne on ten minutes when he burst through and skillfully lobbed Hallen goalkeeper Steve Scannell.

On 30 minutes, Hallen drew level when Tom Warren dinked the ball into the danger zone.

As the Calne defence paused, Shane Hobbs popped up to tap the ball into the net.

Calne again took the lead on the hour when the prolific Glenn Armstrong received the ball from a long throw-in before controlling, turning and shooting in one swift movement.

But 14 minutes later substitute Paul Griffiths levelled the scores with his first touches of the game.

He received the ball just inside Calne's half before skipping past four defenders' challenges and placing an unstoppable right footed shot from 20 yards past Chris Astley into the top corner.