With the Guiseley dressing room looking more like a battlefield casualty clearing station, the patched-up Lions collected a deserved share of the spoils at Liberty Way this evening as they stifled a Town side that was unbeaten in seven and had won their last four games, a sequence that had propelled them to second place in the table.
The measure of the achievement is that Nuneaton only troubled Steve Drench twice during the game, the second occasion being the home side’s equaliser. This was after the visitors had started strongly, and gone ahead after just five minutes through Andy Holdsworth’s daisy-cutter free kick from twenty yards that beat Neil Collett with some ease.
After Matt Wilson had been cautioned, a superb move saw Holdsworth’s cross deflected by the heel of a fortunate defender as James Booker steamed in. By this time Town were making forays into the Guiseley half but they all too often came up against the immovable objects of Simon Ainge, Danny Ellis, Wilson and Dave Merris, the only chance of note being headed over by Danny Glover after he had got in front of Ellis and Drench.
Simon Baldry replaced Booker on the restart and the Lions nearly repeated their first-half opening, only this time Ciaran Toner’s header from Holdsworth’s free kick landed on the roof of the net. Adam Walker finally found a way through the visitors’ rearguard on the hour with a low shot into the far corner, but Holdsworth nearly stole it at the death only to see his shot blocked by Andy Brown.
This was a rock solid performance from a severely-depleted Guiseley side, built on a no-nonsense defensive display and characterised by the efforts up front of Joe O’Neill and Chris Senior, who chased and harried everything without any reward. Given the circumstances, it was a well-deserved point that with a little more luck could have been three.
Team
1 – Drench
2 – Ainge
3 – Merris
4 – Toner
5 – Ellis
6 – Wilson
7 – O’Neill
8 – Clarke
9 – Senior (Burns, 89)
10 – Booker (Baldry, 46)
11 – Holdsworth 5
Unused subs:
12 – Lisles
15 – Halvorsen
18 – Giles
