Bloaters’ winning run comes to an end after 1-1 draw with Fakenham

Great Yarmouth Town shared the spoils with Fakenham Town at The Wellesley on Friday evening in a game which saw both sides finish with 10 men.

The Bloaters came into the game with four consecutive league wins behind them but the Ghosts were also in good form.

The home side made three changes to their midweek starting line-up. Out went Wenn, Goodwin-Wright and Wing and they were replaced by Swatman, Hunter and Tom Blake.

Fakenham found themselves in behind the home defence after just three minutes, with Alby Matthews drawing a good save from Elvijs Putnins, and Harry Exley pounced on the rebound to give his side the lead.

In the 15th minute a long throw was cleared to the edge of the box where Tom Blake struck a shot on the volley which looked goal bound until Frank Gammon smartly tipped it over for a corner.

Yarmouth were now asking more questions, with Tom Hunter starting to cause Fakenham problems with his rampaging runs down the left. On 25 minutes a Jamie Smith header came back off the foot of the post and Hunter fired narrowly over.

The dangerous Callum Brain then fired a shot straight into the safe hands of Putnins, who had a fine night between the posts.

Just when it looked as though the Bloaters would go in at the break trailing another corner, this time from Seamus Bobby, was cleared back to him and he was fouled inside the box when attempting another cross. Payton Swatman stepped up and confidently sent Gammon the wrong way to equalise just a few minutes before half-time.

The second half saw both sides struggling to make any real impact as the game became a little bad tempered, with frustration starting to show on both sides. The referee spoke to several players but his cards remained in his pocket.

It was now Fakenham who were looking more likely to score again but, as with Yarmouth in the first half, they couldn't create any clear-cut chances as both defences held out in testing conditions.

With 20 minutes to go a late tackle by Matthews on Ady Ager resulted in a straight red card for the Fakenham No 9, with Ager receiving a yellow for his reaction. Despite a lot of pushing and shoving from both sets of players no further cards were shown.

With just six minutes left Ager went in late on Curtis which gave the referee no choice but to send the home skipper off to level the sides up. There were further bookings for Tom Blake and Swatman. Putnins made a good low save from Brain as the Ghosts chased a winner but there were no more goals, with a draw being a fair result.

Payton Swatman was presented with the man of the match award by chairman Jack Jay.