Kidderminster Harriers 1(0) v (0)0 Macclesfield Town

Harriers ended their five-game losing streak with a hard-fought, but well-earned, victory over Macclesfield and lifted themselves off the foot of the table.

Jan Molby made a number of changes to the side, welcoming back Youssou Diop and Abdou Sall from injury, Sall making his first start of the season, and surprisingly left out Simon Brown who was relegated to a very attacking substitutes' bench that also included Jesper Christiansen and Iyseden Christie.

Despite the fact that Harriers started the game rooted to the bottom of the league and Macclesfield were flying high in fifth place the teams were fairly evenly matched and it was hard to tell which was which; Macclesfield were very disappointing for a team in their position.  John Miles was lively for the visitors early on and twice in the first five minutes went close to scoring, shooting wide of each post.  At the other end a Steve Burton free kick looked to be heading for goal until it was deflected away for a corner by a Macclesfield head.  Harriers' best chance of an uninspiring first half came two minutes from the end, a Richie Appleby corner from the left found Sall at the far post but he headed straight at Steve Wilson in the Town goal.

After the break Harriers showed more application and were far more lively, Kelvin Langmead in particular causing problems for The Silkmen.  The on-loan striker jinked through the Macclesfield defence through the inside-left channel but fired his shot over the bar.  Macclesfield had a good chance soon after when the Harriers defence disappeared and left Matthew Tipton in acres of space on the right, his shot beat Danby and cannoned back off the far post.  As the game began to ebb and flow the play switched back to the other end and Langmead created an opening for Diop but his shot from the edge of the penalty area was too high.

Christie came on for Diop midway through the second half and looked a threat straight away, looking strong and full of running; he almost scored on his debut when he met Dean Keates' left wing cross but his header was beaten away by Wilson.  The Silkmen should have taken the lead 13 minutes from the end, a Tipton free kick was blocked by the wall and as his follow up shot caused confusion in the Harriers penalty area he was fouled by Steve McMahon who picked up his third yellow card in as many games.  Tipton himself took the penalty but blasted it well wide of John Danby's left-hand post.

In the aftermath of the penalty miss Harriers sent on Brown in place of Ian Foster and the youngster was soon in the thick of the action.  Racing clear of the Macclesfield defence and bearing down on goal he was fouled from behind by Matt Carragher inside the penalty area.  Carragher ws shown the red card for his trouble and for his protests Jon Parkin was shown a yellow.  Richie Appleby stepped forward to take the penalty and made no mistake, sending Wilson the wrong way and registering his first goal in a Harriers shirt since April 2002.  The pressure on Harriers visibly lifted with the goal and they were able to play out the rest of the game in relative calm and survived four minutes of stopage time without any threat from the visitors.