THE LAST thing Carlisle needed from this third round FA Cup tie was another away fixture adding further disruption to a chaotic two months and on top of three 'home' fixtures which have been nothing of the sort.
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| Carlisle were forced to host Yeovil at Blackpool's Bloomfield Road in their FA Cup tie |
And what they certainly did not want was for that extra fixture to be in deepest Somerset next week, a trip some 330 miles and, on a good day, at least six hours from their Brunton Park home.
Yet that is exactly what they got yesterday as they allowed a 2-1 lead to slip in the dying minutes of stoppage time against their League Two rivals.
For all that Yeovil probably deserved parity here - in a fixture diverted to Blackpool's Bloomfield Road on account of the ongoing reconstruction of Brunton Park following extensive flooding - had Carlisle kept their concentration it could have been avoided.
"We need it [a replay] like a hole in the head and that feels like a loss to be honest," said Cumbrians captain Danny Grainger. "But I suppose we will at least know what we will be playing for and that there is a lot of work still to win this tie now."
This was Carlisle's third home game on the road following league matches at Preston and Blackburn in the last month since floods devastated huge swathes of northern England at the start of December.
It left Brunton Park under water, as well as homes and businesses in the immediate vicinity of the ground - something which prompted the players to help out with the clean up.
The club insist they are still on target to return home for the visit of York on January 23 but it will be an FA Cup fourth-round tie, hopefully at home in the following week, that remains the real carrot.
The prospect of hauling one of the Premier Leaue giants to Carlisle would guarantee the TV cameras and a welcome boost to beleaguered finances.
Yesterday's match was played in an echoing Bloomfield Road where the vast majority of the 3,357 crowd had made the journey down the M6 from Carlisle.
There were also over 230 from Somerset and while they made as much noise as they could, this was hardly the stuff of third-round dreams.
The shouts of players echoing around the empty stands were more resonant of a county cup final than the third round of the FA Cup.
Carlisle opened the scoring in the 24th minute when the excellent Grainger crashed in a free-kick from the right side of the area only for the Glovers to equalise after 71 minutes with an uncontested header.
Parity had not lasted long with Mark Ellis stooping low to head in Alex Gillead's free-kick from the left side just five minutes later but, faced with keeping out the increasingly urgent Yeovil, Carlisle crumbled, allowing substitute Shaun Jeffers time and space to turn and shoot from the edge of their area, sneaking the ball inside the far post.
Yeovil should have been down and out by that stage and would have been had Charlie Wyke managed to turn in a rebound after Grainger lashed a shot against the crossbar. But the forward miscued his shot on to the post with only Artur Krysiak to beat, his effort cannoning agonisingly across the goal line and beyond the other post just before the hour.
"It was frustrating," said Carlisle manager Keith Curle. "Particularly that last four or five minutes when we didn't see the game out. Of course a replay is yet another distraction. But for all that we are still in the hat aren't we?"
Carlisle (4-4-2): Hanford; Atkinson, Raynes, Gillesphey, Ellis; Gilliead (Hope 83), Joyce, Dicker, Grainger; Ibehre (Asamoah 90), Wyke (Hery 77). Booked: Dicker. Goals: Grainger 24, Ellis 76.
Yeovil (4-1-4-1): Krysiak; Roberts, Ward, Sokolik, Dickson; Tozer; Compton (Allen 70), Walsh (Bird 86), Dolan, Zoko; Campbell (Jeffers 57) Goals: Zoko 71, Jeffers 92.
Referee: A Madley (West Yorkshire).
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