Football: Furlong stokes fire

Birmingham City 3 Furlong 2, 65, Legg 32 Stoke City 1 Forsyt h 66 Attendance: 18,61

Bob Houston
Saturday 14 September 1996 18:02 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Perhaps Birmingham, who hadn't won a league match since the opening day of the season, were the hungrier. They certainly weren't two goals better than Stoke, who played the more constructive and composed football for the most part. But gifting your opponents a goal within 90 seconds does leave you with something of an uphill struggle.

The culprit was the Stoke goalkeeper, Carl Muggleton, who dallied on Carl Beeston's long back-pass long enough for Paul Furlong to charge down the clearance, chase the ricochet and head into an empty net.

It took time for the visitors to recover from that sucker punch and Jason Bowen and Andy Legg took full advantage, burrowing away at Stoke's defence relentlessly on both wings. After 32 minutes, Legg received just reward when he was first to Barry Horne's precise cross to the far post to stab home the second.

Graham Kavanagh had replaced the injured Beeston in the 25th minute, but sadly only really found his feet in the second half. He was the inspiration for Stoke's 20 minutes of dominance after the restart. In that time they forced eight successive corners, and Ian Bennett earned his corn by touching over Ally Pickering's swerving volley.

But just when Stoke seemed about to underline their superiority with a goal, Chris Holland found an unmarked Furlong with an accurate right- wing cross and the striker pushed home his second.

Ironically, within seconds of the restart, Richard Forsyth was shooting through Bennett's legs to climax good work by Mike Sheron with a neatly taken goal. A minute earlier and it could have changed the outcome.

As it was Stoke still endeavoured to push forward and Bennett had to pull off the day's best save when Steve Bruce's header looked like sneaking in to his own net. Bruce could be forgiven that late aberration as he had shown his value by keeping his own cool and that of those around him when Stoke were in danger of overwhelming the home defence.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in