WHEN you are in your very first season it takes a while to find your feet, get use to playing with your teammates and knowing exactly how good you are.

And that is certainly the case with Scruples FC.

By manager Anthony Birchall's own admittance the new boys still don't know what sort of team they are.

Beating the league leaders one week and getting hammered by the bottom of the table side the next does not help.

But on this display Scruples have got a decent enough side to make an impact on the division in the coming seasons.

Bacup could justifiably feel that they should have sealed the match by half time, such was their superiority, but instead went in at the break 2-1 down.

That was largely due to Lee Eccles, who marshalled the defence superbly, and the busy Zane Reddy whose position just behind the midfield meant he could get stuck in when ever Bacup threatened.

And Reddy even found time to score a real peach of a goal barely two minutes after Bacup took the lead. Shaun Fallows found Anthony Birchall with a deep cross and he headed the ball to Reddy who fired home from 25 yards.

That quick response to Gary Brown's well taken opener turned the game as Bacup looked set to romp to victory. But instead Scruples grew with confidence and took the lead through Aaron Ashworth who barged his way through he Bacup back line and, despite Philip Bannister doing well to save his first effort, he followed up the loose ball to score.

By this stage Scruples had keeper Paul Ashworth to thank for simply keeping his side in the game. For the brave shot stopper did well to save from first Gary Brown and then the instrumental Mark Ormerod, who ran the show for Bacup in the middle of the park.

But after letting his feet do the talking for 86 minutes, Ormerod decided to give referee Chris Price a piece of his mind and promptly got sent off. This was a matter of seconds after teammate Simon Connelly received his marching orders for the same offence!

However, for the time he had on the pitch, Ormerod was involved in everything and should have grabbed an equaliser for Bacup but scooped his shot over the bar from six yards.

Then he was involved in the best moment of the match when his fiercely struck free kick was heading for the top right hand corner until Ashworth rose to somehow tip the ball over for a corner.

That seemed to inspire Scruples and Carl-John Collins in particular who scored a goal out of nothing when he picked the ball up wide on the right, beat three defenders and cooly tucked the ball under the advancing Bannister.

Ormerod's last decisive action of the day before his early bath was to slot home the penalty.

Mark Richardson nearly grabbed a late equaliser but tried to take on one defender too many and when Bacup were reduced to nine men, Scruples must have realised that they were a winning side. Well for this week at least.

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