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| Jamie Frost gave Burnley the lead |
As always, a trip to Gawthorpe must include a weather report and for this one I had to reach once more for the winter thermals to try and ensure I could keep out the cold. We got snow; we got wind; we got a severe drop in temperature and just for some relief the sun came out for a short time and warmed us up.
Burnley had to go into the game without a host of players. Cameron Dummigan and Conor Mitchell are away with Northern Ireland, Cameron Howieson is currently sunning it up in Fiji with the New Zealand under-20 team and both Luke Gallagher and Jason Gilchrist are out on loan at Droylsden.
To add to that, all of Callum Richardson, Luke Conlan, Kevin Ly and young striker Khius Metz are out with injuries to add to the long term absence of Jack Errington. That left Terry Pashley, who was without his right hand man Andy Farrell today because of a family bereavement, with something of a depleted and very young squad to select from.
I think Pash would have been reasonably happy at half time. There had been nothing in the game, literally nothing, with neither goalkeeper called much into the action. The closest either side came was when Nathan Lowe put a free kick just too high.
No goals at half time and, although the wind increased and we were playing against it, we played some of our best football in the opening twenty minutes of the second half.
Twice we were close to getting in on the right hand side and now we were stretching Shrewsbury and getting in behind them. Just on the hour came the goal our play deserved. Andreas Bianga latched onto the ball and played it in for Christian Hill making a run down the left.
Hill did really well to get to the line before pulling the ball back for Jamie Frost who scored from close range.
Soon after it might have been two. Hill did superbly, beating three Shrewsbury players to work his way into a shooting position on the left hand side of the penalty area. But his finish was one of a defender and went high and wide.
Almost immediately we lost the influential Nathan Lowe to a back injury and we lost our grip on the game. Having said that, Shrewsbury didn't actually create too much but three times scored with long range shots.
By the time the second went in we were out of the game. With more youngsters coming on it really was a young team out there, probably as young as any I can recall seeing at this level.
And so the penultimate home game of the season ended in a 3-1 defeat, but there really are some positives to take this season with all these younger players getting opportunities.
The team was: Callum Jakovlevs, Waqas Azam, Charlie Holt, Alex Whitmore, Christian Hill, Brad Jackson (Jamal Crawford), Nathan Lowe (Jake Hargreaves), Luke Daly, Lewis Nuttall (Andy Nugent), Andreas Bianga, Jamie Frost.