ANOTHER away defensive horror show meant Valley came out on the wrong side of a seven goal affair in the Black Country on Tuesday evening.
Despite the bumper goal return, it was a poor spectacle of a game between two sides lacking quality on the night but Tividale were victorious thanks to a 4-3 win in the Evostik First Division South.
Town made one change from the weekend draw against Belper by replacing Keenah Rosser with new signing Edi Appleton at full-back.
And they made a decent enough start by putting the hosts under some early pressure, however this was short-lived with Tividale taking a sixth minute lead when Scott Dutton failed to deal with a wind-assisted cross from Demetri Brown – which sailed straight into the top corner.
The home side went further ahead when a long ball put Brown through, with the striker going on to be flattened by Dutton in the penalty box – allowing Ashley Jackson to stroke the resulting spot-kick under the keeper.
However Town got themselves back in the game just three minutes after the restart, when Tom Ryan met a swirling David Kolodynski cross with a perfect header into the roof of the net.
The scores were soon level after a good Valley move saw Rob Parker feed Tom Liversedge, whose twenty yard looped effort deflected over the head of Dale keeper Tom Turner.
Dutton then did well to keep out a well-struck free-kick from the hosts, before Liversedge stung the hands of Turner with a powerful shot on the turn.
Tividale were back in front on seventy minutes though, when they broke down the right hand side to outnumber the Town defence. The resulting cross found substitute Chris Sterling, who scuffed home from close range with his first involvement in the game.
Liversedge headed a floated Steve Towers’ corner over the bar ahead of another Rugby equaliser, which came when Towers wrong-footed Turner with a long range strike down the middle of his goal.
However Valley were behind again virtually straight from the kick-off, when Ryan missed a seemingly harmless ball to leave Sterling clean through to finish past Dutton.
Town did push for yet another leveller in the remaining ten minutes, with sub Callum Powell’s speculative shot from the edge of the area just flying past the angle and then went even closer when debutant Appleton headed just over the bar, but it was not enough to prevent their opponents from recording a first victory of the season.
