Star date: 19th March 2011 

Wakefield 1 Salford City 2

JACK AND THE WAKEFIELD BEANSTALKS

New recruit Jack Redshaw scored his third goal in three starts for Salford City, as the Ammies got back to winning ways with victory over the unjolly blue giants of Wakefield.

Match report and more photos here…

"Riskantné chovate!...Riskantné chovate!"

Aren't net connected mobile phones brill? Wakefield's Slovakian keeper, Jan Zolna, had just let a corner slip through his fingers and drop down for Mark Ayres to open the scoring for Salford. Twenty seconds and a bit of Google translation later, the chant went up from Salford fans "Riskantné chovate! Riskantné  chovate!"… that's `dodgy keeper' in Slovak lingo.

Poor Jan wasn't impressed as he kicked over some plastic cones on the way back to the dressing room at half time with the Ammies leading 1-0. But then what's he doing in the land of the Wakefield giants anyway? Oh, we know. He's big. He's really big. He's really, really big. He's really, really, really big. Fits in perfectly. Because that's all Wakefield are about. Very big giants hoofing the ball about. Or launching it in from throw-ins a la Rory Delap. Big and boring. And very, very big. That's Wakefield.

And, up front, pitted against the Yorkshire giants was Salford City's new on-loan sensation from Rochdale, Jack Redshaw – all two foot nothing of him. The little forward metaphorically nicked the giants' singing harp, swiped the hen that lays golden eggs and chopped the beanstalks down to size with some magical footwork that had fans drooling – and almost forgetting the loss of top scorer Steve Foster to Chorley recently.

Wakefield had pulled a goal back early in the second half after some characteristic play in the Salford area – the ball gets lumped into the area where one lummox heads it across, another lummox gets his head in the way and a third lummox lummoxes it into the net.

But the clumsy Wakefield giants had no answer to Jack as he terrorised them every time he got the ball, eventually scoring the winning goal his performance deserved after deftly controlling a pass and pinging it across the Slovak keeper to make it 2-1.

In response, Wakefield launched more aerial bombardments than an angry Libyan colonel but the whole Salford team coped admirably to keep them out, Matty Cross, Mark Ayres and Reiss Lee well impressive fending off the air raids.

So after some major disappointments that have seen Salford City chuck away too many points in the 89th minute recently, the Ammies hung on for a victory that could have been greater had the keeper not saved from Rhodri Giggs in the dying seconds of the match. Maybe he wasn't so riskantné after all.

Photos by Andrew Goudie