Football: Thorne hat-trick delights Stoke

A POINT against Reading at the weekend will secure Stoke's berth in the play-off lottery, following their emphatic defeat of Bury at the Britannia Stadium last night.

Their domination was ultimately reflected in the scoreline and it is their work rate, their unswerving desire and ability to operate as a team and the seeming unstoppability of their hat-trick scorer, Peter Thorne, which may yet tilt the odds of reaching the First Division in their favour.

"Our target was to reach the play-offs," the Stoke manager, Gudjon Thordarson, said, "and now, at last, it's in our hands to achieve that aim. We are cool, calm and confident, happy and proud. We have no fear in our hearts."

With Thorne on song, his delight is well-founded. The former Blackburn and Swindon striker has now notched 24 league goals, including three trebles since March.

"When you're in this kind of form, they just keep going in," said Thorne, referring to his third goal, which was a fortuitous headed deflection to a goal-bound Kyle Lightbourne effort.

His opener came courtesy of a mix-up between the Bury goalkeeper, Paddy Kenny, and his defender Chris Swailes, who as good as invited Thorne, latching on to a Lightbourne through ball, to slip between them and knock in to an empty net from close range - perhaps the confusion was caused by the fact that the visitors were forced, on the referee's insistence, to don an old Stoke City away strip due to a colour clash.

Whatever the reason, Bury, lodged in mid-table, struggled to make any impression on the night, rarely breaching the home side's defensive lines, and relying almost exclusively on shots from a distance never likely to trouble Stoke's goalkeeper, Gavin Ward.

Buoyed by the early strike, the home side, seeking to secure their sixth straight league win, created ample opportunities but were thwarted for a spell by keen last-gasp defending and their own ponderous forward thrusts.

A solitary goal was scant reward for their first-half endeavours, but Thorne, unmarked on the edge of the box, doubled the advantage soon after the break. He drove powerfully beyond Kenny's grasp following a deep corner that was floated back into the danger zone by Nicky Mohan.

No one could deny Stoke's right, premature as it may have been, to a lap of honour.

Stoke City (4-4-2): Ward; Hansson, Mohan, Dryden (Melton, 89), Clarke; Kavanagh, O'Connor, Gunnarsson, Gunnlaugsson (Connor, 86); Thorne, Lightbourne. Substitutes not used: Muggleton (gk), Keen, Jacobsen.

Bury (4-3-3): Kenny; Bryan, C Swailes, D Swailes (Challinor, 84), Hill; Billy, Daws, Reid; Preece, Bhutia (Barnes, 76), Littlejohn (Avdiu, 59). Substitutes not used: Barass, Forrest.

Referee: M Cowburn (Blackpool).

Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.