Yetminster fell to an agonising late defeat against BVFL Division II rivals Valmiera Glass, leaving them at the foot of the table and licking their wounds. The Sharks failed to capitalise on an early lead after Kade Masters fired the visitors in front inside 20 minutes after an excellent sweeping move down the right flank.
The Sharks had looked the brighter of the two sides in much of the early running, and deservedly led until a low driven shot swept through a sea of Yetminster defenders and past Yetminster boss Ben Jones into the bottom corner to equalise less than 10 minutes later.
The visitors had created an early advantage when Kade Masters drilled a stinging strike from just inside the box past the helpless Adrian Case after Adam Marsh finished off a fast-paced assault from Norton Payne on the Yetminster right, Marsh neatly turning and providing Masters who needed no second invitation as he rifled home.
Yetminster could have and probably should have re-established their lead minutes later however, but Jamie Lukosius' wicked and raucous effort from the edge of the penalty area rattled only the cross-bar and not the netting dangling from it.
Controversy followed when Masters was denied a strong penalty claim after he was brought down while turning to face goal, referee Trevor Lloyd insisting that Masters went too easily to ground.
Lloyd continued to irk the Yellow Army further when he accepted an immensely questionable ruling from Valmiera linesman Will Chaffey to call Marcus Partridge offside as the Yetminster midfielder beared down on goal.
The men in yellow seemed visibly frustrated by what was perceived to be a sequence of poor decisions against them, but in a close and tightly fought contest, it was 2 Yetminster players who ended up in the referee's notebook by the end of the tie. Kade Masters for kicking the ball away after a tight off-side call, before full-back James Dowding was cautioned for a challenge on Richard Taylor in which the defender seemed to claim the ball before the man.
As much as frustrations at the match official's decisions were bubbling, Yetminster only have themselves to blame for their late collapse. It was very much a game of two halves, with Sharks limiting Valmiera to half-chances as the dominant force in the first period, before Glass turned the screw in the second as the Sharks failed to assert much authority.
Valmiera took the lead as the game neared its conclusion, forcing Jones to gamble and change formation to accomodate the arrivals of Craig Biss and Sam Carver into the fray as Yetminster looked to find a late equaliser.
The gamble back-fired though, and with only 3 men at the back, the visitors were soon overrun as the Glass countered in numbers, leaving Jones short-staffed and isolated in the Sharks goalmouth. Valmiera put the game to bed with 4 minutes to play, but added further gloss to the scoreline as former Yetminster trialist Craig Royle escaped the attention of Adam Roman, and squeezed a low strike across the face of goal past the out-stretched Yetminster boss.
Yetminster had targeted this as a massive contest in the context of their league ambitions for the season, and to leave Sherborne empty handed will have been galling to say the least. To have lost by a result that flatters to deceive, even more so, especially having been in the ascendancy for much of the first hour of the game.
Defeat leaves the Sharks two points adrift at the foot of Division II, and with work to do if they are to ensure that they don't spend a 2nd successive campaign rooted to the bottom of the Blackmore Vale Football League.
