'Roller-coaster ride typical of our year'

By Wendy Gee - 

IAN Baird felt Saturday's 4-3 defeat at Maidenhead encapsulated Eastleigh's hit-and-miss season in 90 rollercoaster minutes.

Having fallen 2-0 down, the injury-riddle Spitfires hit back to lead 3-2 only for the relegation-battling  Magpies to equalise and then score what they believed to be a Blue Square Bet South life-saver with 92 minutes on the clock.

But there was to be a painful sting in the tail for the Berkshire club when news filtered through that Havant & Waterlooville had also scored a dramatic stoppage-time winner against Staines and it would be the Hawks staying up at the Magpies' expense.

"Maidenhead celebrated like they had won the Champions League but then, unfortunately for them, they got the news that Havant had scored," said Baird.

Despite the ill-feeling that followed Baird's shock decision to quit Havant and join Eastleigh in 2007, the ex-Saint insists he had no feelings either way on the relegation issue.

"The most important thing for us was to concentrate on ourselves and not get involved with anything else going on," he said.

"But, unfortunately, our performance reflected our whole season - consistently inconsistent and with some bad luck.

"(Goalkeeper) Jack Dovey had to come off early with an ankle injury and then we lost (skipper) Tom Jordan to a tweaked medial knee ligament before half-time.

"Then later on Gary Elphick got a dead leg and was effectively a passenger. It was like playing with ten men."

Maidenhead were 2-0 up inside 21 minutes. Eastleigh pulled one back in the 41st minute when Bradley Bubb set up Lee Peacock to score and then came a special moment for teenage sub Sam Wilson who slotted home his first league goal on the hour.

It got even better for the Spitfires four minutes later when Mitchell Nelson headed them in front.

But Maidenhead levelled and then bagged a stoppage-time winner from Paul Semakula.

Ecstatic Magpies fans ran onto the pitch only for their celebrations to be cut short by events at Westleigh Park, where Joe Dolan's late goal secured Havant a priceless 3-2 victory.