Shrewsbury Town

A quiet weekend for Town's loan players

With Chesterfield loanee Zak Jules now starting his long road to recovery after a hamstring tear and the Scottish Premiership not in action due to the international break, only four Town players were ever likely to see any game time this weekend and only two actually played.

Ryan Sears was the pick of the bunch as he helped Newtown to a clean-sheet against Cefn Druids. Druids had the best of the first-half, whilst Newtown had chances in the second, but a 0-0 draw seemed a fair result on the day. The result leaves Newtown in 8th place with 9 points from their opening 8 games.

Southport’s difficult spell continued. They sacked their manager Alan Lewer last week after a run of five successive defeats and despite an improved performance, they were beaten again – this time by Spennymoor Town. Dom Smith played the full-ninety minutes as the Sandgrounders appeared to be heading for a point when Jack Sampson scored an 88th minute equaliser, but Spennymoor’s Glen Taylor pounced on a Southport mistake and rounded former Town ‘keeper Mark Halstead to score a 95th minute winner.

Meanwhile, Callum Roberts was on the bench for TNS’ 4-0 win over Elgin City. A fine Greg Draper strike got The New Saints off to a flying start and that was followed up by goals from Aeron Edwards, Jamie Mullan and Draper’s second of the game. The result means that TNS go into the hat for the quarter-finals of the Irn-Bru Cup.

Finally, Tamworth boss Andy Morrell decided to go with Dan Jezeph in goal instead of Shaun Rowley against second-bottom side Gainsborough Trinity. However, it was Trinity who came out on top, winning 2-1.