Nailers late barrage not enough to prevent 3rd defeat in a row

The Nailers went into the game off the back of two defeats due to conceding late goals, something that manager, Charlie Palmer would certainly be looking to remove from his team's performances.

Ruben Wiggins-Thomas returned to the starting 11 for the first time since his injury in the game against Carlton Town. Also, Anthony Griffith-Junior was making his debut for the Nailers, after joining from Matlock Town. He took the place of Jermaine Hollis, who picked up an injury against Spalding United, just 3 days earlier.

The Nailers started very quickly and assertively, with a number of early attacks that were just lacking the final ball to give themselves a clear cut goal scoring opportunity

However, Romulus quickly found their way back into the game with Hedilberto Vilela-Santos making a number of impressive runs for the home side that were certainly giving the Belper Town defenders a lot of work to do.

But it would turn out to be a set piece that caught the Nailers out just 20 minutes in. Nathan Waite out jumped John Guy, who probably could have done better defensively, his header beat Danny Haystead to give Romulus an early lead.

The Belper Town players were not going to let this get to them and immediately began pushing to get themselves an equaliser.

The closest that they came to getting this equaliser was through an impressive Jonathan Williams free kick from the right. His cross found John Guy in the box who managed to reach out and get a good touch on the ball, unfortunately for him he pushed the shot straight at the goalkeeper, making it easy for the goalkeeper to collect.

Griffith-Junior was making some impressive runs for the Nailers, just as Vilela-Santos had been for Romulus, but he could never seem to find that killer pass that would have gave Belper an opportunity for an equaliser.

In the second half, the Nailers looked to have taken control as they were creating a lot more chances and keeping Romulus at bay extremely well.

This mainly came down to the superb effort from Dominic Allen at right back whose fantastic tackling and superb work ethic ended a number of Romulus attacks and started some of the Belper ones too.

However, this hard work was not rewarded, as Romulus got themselves a penalty. Jonathan Williams came running back into the box to try and challenge the Romulus forward who was on the ball, as he ran past him the Romulus player fell to the floor with some believing that Williams clipped his ankles, the referee pointed to the spot, with many Belper fans in disbelief.

Mark Branch calmly converted for Romulus on the 81st minute, this looked to put the game out of sight for the Nailers.

But the Belper Town players were not willing to go down without a fight. Just minutes later Alex Steadman curled his shot superbly into the bottom right of the goal to restore hope for the Nailers.

Then, in the final minutes of the game, the ball was put into the box, towards the feet of Ruben Wiggins-Thomas, his shot was blocked just before the game broke out into a goal mouth scramble, this was cleared away and was matched with the sound of the final whistle.

Heart break again for the Nailers, however they will be looking to get back to winning ways in the next game when they travel to face Loughborough dynamo.