The Ilkley Town AFC players will have come away from the game highly disappointed to not get all three points as George Gomersall’s opening goal was cancelled out by a late equalizer from Darwen’s Leon Creech, writes Evan Seaman.
The first opportunity of the game fell to the hosts when attacking full back Joseph Edmonds went for the overlap before he tried his luck in front of goal, but the shot hit the side netting.
Shortly afterwards, Kevin Gonzalez thought he had opened the scoring for Ilkley after pouncing on the end of a rebound, but the linesman deemed it to be offside.
After around 20 minutes of play, Gonzalez pressed Hood into making a mistake but fortunately for him the ball went just wide of the net.
There was a decent save from Hood after Alfie Dean tried to curl it into the top corner, but the Darwen keeper made a good save to keep the home side at bay.
In the second half, Ilkley continued to put Darwen under pressure and nearly got their reward from a corner when Gonzalez got on the end of the cross, but his powerful header rattled the crossbar and went over.
But in the 65th minute, Sam Dexter’s side finally broke the deadlock after Gomersall found some space on the edge of the box before he managed to curl it into the far corner to make it 1-0 to the Baht’atters.
However, their lead did not last very long when Charlie Bell slipped which enabled Creech to chip the ball over him to make it all square again.
Overall, Ilkley played well against a well-drilled, physical Darwen side and got a decent point, but the home supporters will see it as two points dropped as their promotion hopes took a hit.
The result means Ilkley stay in third place on 45 points, four off second placed Chadderton. Whereas Darwen also remain in eighth position on 29 points, 11 points off the playoffs.
The attendance in today’s game was a solid 115 including the away supporters.