LAST GASP SLIP UP!

Stoke's injury time equaliser on Saturday revived painful memories of eight Premiership points dropped in last-minute lapses but there was a firm rejection from the Burnden dressing room that the bad habits are returning.

Confident that this isolated case will not become an epidemic, Colin Todd dismissed the comparison as "not worth mentioning". He refuses to let a moment's lack of concentration overshadow the previous 90 minutes which confirmed his team's table-topping status.

And club captain John McGinlay, irritated more by the fact that Wanderers had missed the chance to go four points clear of the field, treated the suggestion with equal contempt. "Some people might talk about the old habits coming back but," he insisted, "this is nothing like last season.

"Last season we would probably have got beat. All this means is that we've missed a chance to put a bit more daylight between ourselves and the others at the top.

"But we are still there on merit and that's where we'll stay. This was just one of those things."

One of those things it might have been but Graham Kavanagh's goal, scored with the game into its second minute of injury time, left Wanderers feeling as though they had indeed lost a game they really thought they had won.

Nathan Blake, evidently content in the knowledge that he'd clinched three more promotion points with his first half goal, was playing "keep-ball" on one touchline while Phil Brown was conducting the community singing on the other. In a flash, Stoke nicked the ball, Richard Forsyth played it through the inside right channel and Kavanagh, once a youngster under Colin Todd's management at Middlesbrough, dashed in to drill a shot past the previously untroubled Keith Branagan.

As Stoke boss Lou Macari confirmed a deal was in place to turn Kavanagh's loan into a permanent transfer, Per Frandsen reflected on the cruel twist of fate.

The Dane, who combined with Alan Thompson to give Wanderers the quality edge in a game of surprisingly few scoring chances, admitted: "It's so hard to swallow. It's like we lost the game.

"Time was up. I just don't know what happened. We had the ball down at their end then, three seconds later, it's in the net at the other. They hadn't created a single chance before that.

"The defeat at Southend was our worst result and this is another game we feel we have lost - yet we have played very well."

The real irony is that the Wanderers defence, notably Gerry Taggart and Chris Fairclough, had done a magnificent job in snuffing out any hint of a threat from Mike Sheron, the Division's 10-goal top scorer.

The former Manchester City man never got a look in nor did his sidekick John Gayle, whose presence was more of a nuisance. Gayle's every touch was jeered - a legacy of the controversial incident at Burnley which has kept Nicky Spooner out of the game for almost two years with a broken leg - but his physical presence posed a certain threat until he retired injured on 67 minutes. Pushing Kavanagh forward from midfield, Stoke seemed to have surrendered any semblance of attacking power.

Irritatingly it isn't the first time Wanderers' respected and accomplished defenders have been caught out.

McGinlay, who knows a thing or two about centre-backs, paid tribute to the Burnden duo. "We dominated the game, although we didn't create too many chances ourselves," he admitted.

"But they had nothing until the goal. Mike Sheron's come here and hasn't had a kick - Gerry and Chris were magnificent."

Nevertheless, the defenders will agonise over their costly loss of concentration but the manager refused to point fingers at any individual, stressing: "You just can't apportion blame on anyone after something like that happens.

"We've lost possession and it's taken them just one pass before they've stuck it in the net.

"It was sloppy play and we've stressed before how important it is for the defence to keep its concentration. The team as a whole is bitterly disappointed but the back four and Keith Branagan are gutted.

"They'll get over it. They know we've thrown two points away but they deserved to get a clean sheet. There's no question about that. We'd reduced them to virtually nothing. We set our stall out to win the game and we were, what ... 30 seconds away from winning it when we had that one lapse. That's all it was. It was a hiccup and it's happened.

"We can only blame ourselves. We just need to be a bit more professional over the full 90 minutes."

As an attacking spectacle the game failed to live up to it's billing. Nevertheless, Blake's power and determination saw him win the duel of the sharpshooters; his overall performance being far more menacing than Sheron's and his goal, three minutes before half time once again highlighting the "new man" image that has been a revelation this season.

Macari had warned his defenders not to be drawn into a wrestling match with the Welsh powerhouse but Larus Sigurdsson - Gudni Bergsson's fellow Icelander - couldn't help himself. As the two tussled, the Stoke man made a hash of a back pass and the belligerent Blake shouldered his way in before lifting the ball over Carl Muggleton for his ninth of the season.

"It was a miskick," Macari reckoned. He also suggested Stoke deserved their point but there was little evidence to support that claim. Even Kavanagh admitted that, delighted though they were to take a point at Burnden, they were lucky.

Wanderers had to work hard to penetrate a hard-working and well-organised defence, in which one-time Burnden loan man John Dreyer was a key figure. But they were comfortably the better side.

Indeed, it's the fact that they have been superior in all nine games so far that, despite this setback, is breeding confidence and optimism that they can go the distance in the race for the Premiership, provided their concentration holds.

They stay top of the table and they remain the nation's top scorers with Blake high in the individual charts. In Taggart and Fairclough they boast one of the best central defensive partnerships at this level and Thompson and Frandsen have yet to meet their match as a central midfield duo.

They have just learned a painful lesson but they have no reason to be anything other than confident going to Wolves on Wednesday for another test of their promotion potential.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.