SWANAGE T&H 2 BALTI SPORTS 2

PATCHED up Balti Sports were hit by a late Swanage leveller as the sides played out a hard-fought 2-2 draw at Days Park.

Balti, who were struck by an array of unavailabilities once again, had put themselves in the ascendancy thanks to an Ethan Devaney double before the Swans fired again late on through Richard Best to bag a point.

The home side opened the scoring through Chris Woods after around 35 minutes and they retained that advantage going in at the break.

But Balti came out in the second period still in good spirits and, with the addition of Charlie Kenderdine, who raced from work to come off the bench in the second period, Sports pounced on a couple of defensive lapses.

The away side gambled and change their shape to 3-5-2 and it paid dividends when Devaney managed to calmly slot the ball home on the hour mark to level things up.

Devaney then doubled his tally, making no mistake to capitalise on another slip in the Swanage back line to put Marco Nott’s men in the lead after 75 minutes.

Andy Nott was then tasked with making a good save in the Balti goal after the Swans went through one-on-one but there was nothing the Balti stopper could do to prevent Swanage grabbing a point, when substitute Richard Best finished well after a deflected shot to seal a point.

“It was pleasing because last week we fell away quite badly,” said Balti boss Marco Nott on his side’s performance.

“It was seriously tough in the first half, the referee said before the game if it started raining after 10 minutes he would have had to have called the game off.

“It’s always a really tough place to go at Swanage and we really did have a serious number of players out for us.

“We literally had to do everything we could to get Charlie (Kenderdine) there.

“Ross Walker, who hasn’t been around for four or five months and he came back last week. He started at right-back and was begging me to take him off after about 70 minutes.

“He was outstanding and put a great shift in, as did Simon Proffitt, he had a great game as well.

“We even had one lad who pulled out as we were in the car park before travelling which was very disappointing.”

Balti: A Nott, Walker (Jones 70), Burton, Anderson, Proffitt, Batchelor, May, McConnachie (Kenderdine), Pearce, Devaney, Lane. Sub not used: Hawke