Match report

Video clips

• All the goal action (2.7Mb)
• Appleby's goal (843kb)
• Halifax equaliser (249kb)
• Coates' first goal (911kb)
• Coates' second goal (640kb)

The fireworks at St Helens were eclipsed by a brilliant Swans performance at the Vetch tonight. This was easily the best performance seen at the Vetch since Molby's team at their best.

Coates and Appleby ran Halifax ragged, and the Swans could easily have won by 5 or 6 goals. Coates in particular gave the most brilliant display of ball control and attacking skill seen for many years. I can't remember any Halifax defender getting anywhere near him for the whole of the game.

Alsop and Watkin both played well, as did Cusak and Lacey in midfield with Lacey probably having his best ever game. The defence was solid as usual apart from one mix up which gave Halifax their goal.

Players marks:-
Freestone 7 not quite faultless
Price 4 Lacking in skill and composure, gives the ball away too often
Howard 8 Back to his best, links well with Coates
Cusak 8 Worked hard
Smith 7 Defensively very good
Bound 6 One or two mistakes early on, otherwise good
Appleby 9 Excellent game, good goal (perhaps deflected)
Lacey 7 worked very hard, good skill level, let down by some of his distribution
Watkin 8 a good game once again
Alsop 8 His best game for some time, won lots of ball, often heading to Watkin
Coates 10 Quite brilliant, his Giggs corners at pace cause havoc, 2 goals could have had 4
Subs None used
Hollins 8 for leaving out Boyd, but we must replace Price

Well without a doubt, that was Swansea's best performance for a very long time let alone this season.

The thoughts that will be in people's minds however, will be which is the real Swansea City - the one on show last night or the one that's been on show for the last 6 months?

It is far too early to judge on that one, but it would be uncharitable of us not to give Hollins and Curtis the benefit of the doubt one last time. As Murp pointed out earlier this week, wasn't it around this time of year that Molby's team finally started to come good.

The pattern of last night's match was a good first 15 mins followed by a poor 15 minutes and then back to a storming 15 minutes. Apart from Roger's error for their goal, we could have been 4-0 up at half-time as the woodwork had already come to their rescue twice.

The second half had much less shape to it, but a battling performance saw us add to the tally when a Coates shot took a deflection to wrong foot their keeper. This was justice in a way, as a 2-1 scoreline would have flatterred Halifax.

I've never heard Hollins do so much shouting from the touchline and even Curt gave it a bit of "Saturday Night Fever" by pushing his arms in out - trying to convey movement to the players.

The first goal was a cracking shot from the edge of the box from Richie Appleby which their keeper appeared to claw out of the air, but the sheer force saw it fall behind him and bounce once into the roof of the net.

Against sustained Swansea pressure, a hopeful upfield ball saw Smith and their centre forward chase back toward Freestone, but the keeper totally misjudged the situation and came running out to present Tate with a lob into the unguarded goal.

Fortunately for the Swans, they hit back immediately when Coates forced the ball home at the far post in a very crowded Halifax box.

Player ratings:
Freestone 5 - looked uncomfortable on several occasions
Price 6 - did not play with confidence until we went 3-1 up
Howard 7 - good game overall after a slowish start
Smith 6 - not as comfortable as usual
Bound 6 - ditto
Appleby 8 - one of his better games
Cusack 8 - another good game - up and down the pitch
Lacey 8 - best game I've seen from him
Coates 9 - crowd favourite ;-)
Watkin 8 - worked his gonads off
Alsop 7 - worked all game as well
Subs: None used.

Summary:
The reason we won convincingly tonight was that all 4 midfield players had good games. The defence for a change looked shaky.

Coates Puts Gloss On Victory As Swans Go Into Top Half Of Table

JONATHAN COATES scored twice - his first league goals for 18 months - to fire Swansea into the top half of the Third Division at the Vetch Field last night.

The Swans clicked smoothly into gear after a slow start to produce one of their most convincing performances of the season on a day that manager John Hollins was given the dreaded vote of confidence by chairman Steve Hamer and the club revealed an £846,000 loss for the year ended May 1998 - the first year under the ownership of Silver Shield, who have loaned the club £2m.

Hamer said the club was “vibrant and healthy” and he had every faith in the management and the players “producing the promotion goods”.

The Swans moved five places up the table with a display watched by their smallest home league crowd of the season.

They endeavoured to construct fluent attacks, one 10-man move ending with Coates firing straight at keeper Lee Butler.

Livewire Coates was involved in many of the best attacks, one of his urgent runs concluding with a cross that just eluded Julian Alsop.

Halifax rarely threatened and the match was ignited by three goals in seven minutes.

Richard Appleby gave Swansea a 36th-minute lead with his first home league goal of the season. His first shot was blocked and although Butler got a hand to his second effort, it looped into the net.

The visiting keeper made a sprawling save to prevent Alsop increasing the lead from Appleby’s accurate pass.

But a misunderstanding between centre-backs Jason Smith and Matthew Bound and Roger Freestone gave Chris Tate the unexpected chance to lob the Swansea keeper for a 42nd-minute equaliser.

However, Swansea regained the lead within 60 seconds. Butler could only parry a close-range header from Steve Watkin and Coates reached the rebound to score from close range.

The over-worked Butler twice came out to foil Coates and Nick Cusack’s header cleared the bar.

But the Swans clinched their third successive home win nine minutes from time as Appleby cleverly outwitted Mark Jules and crossed from the right for Coates to drill a low 25 yard drive which wrong-footed the keeper after clipping Halifax captain Graham Mitchell, who was part of Cardiff City’s promotion-winning side last season.