Western Morning News
FOR 81 minutes, the gameplan had worked to a tee. Exeter City had defended as though their lives depended on it, but one incredulous refereeing decision ultimately cost them the chance of taking anything from their tough League One trip to Millwall.
The Grecians had been well drilled and kept Millwall at bay for long spells of Saturday's encounter, but when Phil Gibbs penalised captain Matt Taylor for winning the ball some 25 yards from goal, the writing was on the wall. You knew what was coming next. Neil Harris, celebrating his 300th start for the south Londoners, stepped up and curled a sublime free-kick in into the back of the net for the only goal of the game.
Things were to get worse for Exeter as their hot-headed Irishman, Barry Corr, then saw red for a reckless challenge in the final minute. It was his third red card of the season and means he will now face a five match ban. Stupid is putting it mildly.
To be fair, the result was probably deserved for Millwall. Exeter were thankful to their veteran goalkeeper Andy Marriott for keeping them in the game with a quite outstanding performance. Time and time again he thwarted Millwall's potent strikeforce, but there was nothing he could do with the winner. For City, they looked as though they could cause a shock shortly past the hour mark, the point at which they tactically showed their attacking hand, but they did not do enough to test David Forde in the home goal.
On the plus side, the defeat did not plunge City into the bottom four, but they sit perilously close. They now enter a run of games which will make or break their season with six successive matches against teams involved in the relegation dogfight. What a time for Corr to be suspended, but that is not Paul Tisdale's only concern.
The City chief saw Marcus Stewart limp out of the action after just 15 minutes following a recurrence of his hamstring problem. With Adam Stansfield out for the next month, it leaves Stuart Fleetwood, Richard Logan, Craig McAllister and Ben Watson as City's only fit strikers. James Norwood may find his loan spell at Sutton being curtailed prematurely, while Troy Archibald-Henville's absence for the rest of the campaign due to injury means the Grecians are thin at the back as well. These are testing times indeed for Tisdale and Exeter.
City went into Saturday's game deploying the 4-1-4-1 formation that served them well at Milton Keynes Dons, where Corr was the hero by salvaging a point with a stoppage-time equaliser. The one difference was that Joe Burnell started in place of Alex Russell, but he looked lost in an unfamiliar right wing role as Liam Sercombe was preferred instead to play in the middle. The gameplan was simple: nullify Millwall for the best part of an hour, keep it tight and look to win it in the final third of the game, which is why, for 60 minutes at least, Exeter showed little attacking ambition. For that, they cannot be faulted because the plan could so easily have worked.
Marriott's busy afternoon begun inside five minutes when he pulled off a stunning fingertip stop to keep out Steve Morison and then again to turn Shaun Batt's header over the crossbar from the resulting corner.
Batt had two more efforts saved by Marriott before Stewart limped out of the action. Harris had the ball in the net shortly afterwards, but it was chalked off because of a foul on Marriott before Exeter registered their solitary strike on target when Sercombe scuffed one into David Forde's arms from fully 25 yards.
Marriott was receiving plenty of stick - and wolf whistles too - from the notorious home faithful for his all-pink kit, but he was on a one-man mission to keep the Lions at bay. He again came to the rescue to thwart Morison before he made another world-class save to keep out Batt from close range.
One aspect of Millwall's play that really caught the eye was their quickness to close Exeter down, but there was no way they could keep it up for 90 minutes. However, Exeter were struggling to get their creative players into the game, none more so than Ryan Harley who was way off the pace for the first hour. However, the introduction of Fleetwood for Burnell changed that as Exeter enjoyed their most productive spell of the game. Fleetwood thought he had won his side a penalty when his harassment led to Darren Ward handballing, but there was no way Gibbs was going to give little old Exeter a penalty in the Lions' Den at Millwall.
Fleetwood certainly looked lively when he came on - he will have to show plenty more of that in the coming weeks though - and an ambitious chip drifted narrowly wide before his cross almost caught out Forde, but again drifted wide of the upright.
Millwall came back into it with Marriott again saving from Morison, but he was finally beaten nine minutes from time from Harris's free-kick. The sight of the ball ending up on the halfway line had done nothing to persuade Gibbs that Taylor had actually won his tackle and it seemed he could not wait to present Harris with his golden chance. However, City could have few arguments when the referee reacted just as quickly in flashing the red card at Corr for his reckless, studs up challenge on Alan Dunne in the final minute. It merely compounded a miserable week for the Grecians.
