Tuesday 26 July 2005 - Winterfield Road - kick off 7.30pm Pre-season Friendly

With Martin Paul and Steve Jones both still missing due to family holidays, Alex Sykes partnered Scott Partridge and former Bristol Rovers defender Scott Bryce was given another chance to impress. Also still missing due to injury were Chris Holland and Gethin Jones, plus Andrew York and Matt Coupe, which forced City manager to play Yan Klukowski in an unfamiliar right-back role. On the plus side Adrian Harris made his first start in a City shirt after coming through his twenty minute substitute outing unscathed on Saturday. On Paulton’s excellent surface City began brightly and they had a great chance to open the scoring after 11 minutes. Neat passing saw Partridge burst clear but his shot was blocked by keeper Scrivens. Jim Rollo was first to the rebound only for his effort to see the same outcome with help from a defender. The home side came into the game more after this escape and on 25 minutes they took the lead. Ford collected the ball on the edge of the box and fired a rising shot past Paul Evans. The rest of the half belonged to City but they failed to turn this possession into goals. Sykes got ahead of Rovers’ back line after 35 minutes but couldn’t beat Scrivens then the same player sent a shot into the side netting after a pass from Andy Sandell released him just before the interval.

At the break Harris and Klukowski were replaced by Sam Duggan and Adam Shackle, with Rollo dropping back into the right-back spot. They had a lucky escape three minutes into the half when Ford rattled the crossbar with a right-foot shot. The game settled into a quiet period with both sides making further changes although Ben Cleverley – one of a number of ex-City players in the Paulton line-up – did see a 66th minute shot deflected wide. The arrival of Ricky Hulbert livened up City’s attack and his efforts ended with Graeme Power curling a shot wide 15 minutes from time and Partridge hitting the foot of the post five minutes later. Within a minute it seemed Hulbert had given City a great chance to deservedly equalise when he was felled in the box. However, the referee incredibly waved play-on and moments later Paulton scored again, although in very controversial circumstances. Hulbert remained on the ground after the challenge which led to the ball being kicked out of play to allow him to receive treatment. When the ball was returned instead of it being knocked back to Evans, Cleverley deliberately fired a 50-yard shot over a stunned keeper into the roof of the net. Even his teammates were too embarrassed to celebrate the goal but they then compounded the error by failing to allow City to score unopposed as had happened in more important games than this. The remainder of the game passed uneventfully and it was a shame that it should have ended on such a sour note.