Leeds came from behind to take a draw from this local derby at Hillsborough, but a lot of the coverage of this game will focus on an assault on Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Chris Kirkland.
Neil Warnock was able to name an unchanged team for this game as Randy Austin made it back in time, but the Jamaican international was understandably weary, and didn’t make it beyond the start of the second half. Leeds had the better of the opening ten minutes, but then the Wendies began to take control of the game, with our defence looking highly suspect once again.
Somehow we managed to survive two very dodgy bits of handling without going behind, the first coming when Kenny failed to hold onto a long range shot and was very lucky to see it come back off the underside of the bar. The second was a blatant handball from Becchio who dived to push the ball away from a corner, just as it was about to drop for a forward to shoot, but we got away with it as neither the referee or the linesman got a good view this latest Argentinian ‘hand of god’.
In between these two incidents Tonge produced our best chance of the half when he curled a free kick around the wall, but Kirkland’s handling was a bit more secure than Kenny’s and he was on hand to pust the ball away. But otherwise we were offering little going forward, with Becchio conceding possession far too easily and Diouf getting frustrated at a bit of rough treatment from the Wednesday defence.
Just when I thought that we would go in level at half time, Wednesday took the lead in the 43rd minute, from a throw in when the ball was wiped down by a ballboy to make it easier to throw it a long distance into the box. In my opinion this is an artificial aid to the home side (it’s only ever done at ground where the home side have a long throw expert) so it shouldn’t be allowed. Anyway, when the ball was hurled into the box Bothroyd was able to outjump Pearce to nod the ball into the corner.
Austin was replaced by Norris to give Leeds a bit more energy for the second half, but there was no immediate improvement in the performance, with Bothroyd missing an opportunity to put the home side further in front after some more dodgy defending. And as the play got rather scrappy Wednesday picked up a couple of overdue bookings, with Michael Brown also getting a yellow card later in the game.
Our second and final substitution came when Peltier went down injured and was replaced by Varney, but many of us would have liked to have seen the new lad Ryan Hall getting an opportunity instead. We seemed to be drifting towards a defeat when Tonge salvaged a point with an excellent half-volley from over 20 yards out, with the aid of a deflection that took it out of Kirkland’s reach into the corner of the net.
But that turned out to be the least of Kirkland’s worries. As some Leeds fans spilled out onto the pitch from the celebrations behind the goal, one of them ran round and pushed the Wednesday keeper in the face with both hands. It seemed a bit over the top to give him treatment on the floor for several minute, as he certainly wasn’t punched, but it might have been the shock of it as much as anything. The assailant managed to jump back into the crowd, but he’s been caught on video and he won’t be getting away with it.
After that the rest of the game petered out into an anti-climax and even five minutes of injury time wasn’t long enough to produce any further chances for either side. You could say that a draw wasn’t a bad result in a hard-fought local derby, and maybe more than we deserved on the night, but of course a point may not be the only thing we end up with after the night’s events.
If Dave Jones has his way we will all be banned from every away ground in the country, which is a ludicrous over-reaction to the action of one person. By all means ban the idiot responsible for the assault, but the rest of us? Hopefully the FA will make a more rational assessment in the cold light of day, but you never know.