THEY often complain in football that a teamfailed to finish, but on Saturday it was a case of both teams bitterlycomplaining that the referee failed to finish bhy calling time early on anexciting clash between Kendal Town and North FerribyUnited.

Final score: Kendal Town 2, North Ferriby United2.

With both sides playing good end-to-end football andlooking for the winner Mr J.

Waring brought proceedings to acontroversial end by blowing for full-time with just 88 minutes on theclock and several minutes of injury time unplayed.

He left thefield amid a cluster of protesting players and officials of both sides andboos from the crowd, defending his action by claiming that the full 90minutes was up by his watch.

Of the two teams, Kendal hadmarginally the biggest cause to complain, for the balance of play over theentire game had been slightly in their favour.

Manager BryanGriffiths had expressed doubts before the match of the strength of hisavailable squad, but in the event they turned on one of the best all roundteam performances of the season with a rock solid defence, a fluentmidfield and creative front runners.

O'Keefe, who operatedjust behind strikers Rick Shaw and Andy Heald, but was the man who gotboth the Kendal goals.

The first came just after just threeminutes when O'Keefe, who in the way of many good strikers sometimesappears to have an ungainliness which deceivesdefences.

Falling backwards as he received a pass just insidethe Ferriby penalty area he still managed to stick out a leg and loop theball into the top right-hand corner of the net.

On 15 minutesAndy Heald demonstrated his skills by collecting the ball, turning awayfrom his marker and slipping the ball out to Danny Kent, whose cross wasjust cut out by keeper Mike Heath, with two Kendal forwards just beyondhim and waiting to pounce.

At the other end Dave Burrowdisposed an onrushing forward with an immaculately timed tackle, just oneof the many which during the course of the game showed his worth to theKendal team.

There was little Kendal could do about Ferriby'sequaliser in the 35th minute.

A well-flighted corner from theright to the near post was headed on across the goal to former Englandyouth international Simon Wood who hammered it back across into the righthand side of the goal with keeper and defence committed to going the otherway.

Within a minute Kendal were 2-1 up with a goal of the oldfashioned style.

Shaw's cross saw the Ferriby keeper drop theball under a strong challenge from Heald and O'Keefe was on hand to pokeit home.

Ferriby protested bitterly about the challenge on thekeeper, captain Mike Trotter getting a yellow card for hispains.

Just before half-time Ferriby almost levelled it whenKendal keeper Price called for a long ball, but missed it completely, ashot was firmly struck goalwards, but Steve Hodgson did well to head itoff the line.

The equaliser came just a minute into thesecond-half Mike Garrity, who otherwise played an excellent creative rolein midfield clattered down an attacker just inside the penalty box, healso got a yellow card for arguing about the penaltydecision.

At the spot kick Price guessed the right way, butthe power of Wood's shot saw it in the net before the keeper could flinghimself across.

Despite the equaliser Kendal were slowlygetting the upper hand with Jamie Skeoch and Danny Kent, playing as a veryforward full-back coming into the action.

A good through ballby O'Keefe found Kent in the 67th minute and he put the ball in the net,but it was ruled offside.

A cross from Mark Howard into thesix yard box saw both O'Keefe and Shaw sliding in, but just failing tomake contact.

As the pace increased Hodgson, Burrow and Howardbroke up the Ferriby attacks with accurate tackles and put theirmidfielders away on the counter, but then came the disappointment of theearly finish, with both sides hoping that the thing Mr Waring would getfor Christmas would be a new watch.

Team:G.

Price, D.

Kent, S.

Hodgson,D.

Burrow, M.

Howard, J.

Skeoch,M.

Garrity, M.

Fahey, L.

O'Keefe,R.

Shaw, A, Heald (D.

Foster 69thminute).