Hardly Athletic poor run of form continued as they were beaten 8-6 by Port Vale DFC.
Athletic handed a debut to Scott Salmon, who bagged a brace, and recalled Dan Buxton and Chris Cope, whilst the teams two survivors from last week, Andy McEvoy and Dan Hallam,both grabbed a pair of goals each.
The game started with two late pull outs leaving Athletic with just five players and Salmon, having not played a game of football for two years, was suffering towards the end, the 39-year-old's lack of match fitness evident whilst other players tired aswell.
Good link play between Hallam and Cope early on gave hope that the first victory of the season could be on the way and after recovering from going behind midway through the half Athletic came back to lead at thebreak as, firstly, Salmon finished from a tight angle before McEvoy smashed in a drive effort right on the half time whistle.
Marking and tracking had been good but the team conditioning was taking a hammering and a controversial goal from the restart probably didn;t help the tiring limbs.
With two Hardly players still getting drinks behind the goal, and Hallam standing on the centre circle looking at his team mates, the ref raised his arm to restart the game, blatantly without the side being ready, or even informed the game had restarted with a whistle.
The Vale players ran past a confused Hallam and slammed the ball past Buxton, standing in as all three keepers were absent, to level the scores.
As usual a mad five minute spell ensued the game slipped away from Hardly as slack marking allowed five goals in quick succession, all coming from easy through balls to an unmarked striker in front of goal.
Hardly came back into the game, and Hallam quickly grabbed two in succession to give Hardly hope. Salmon then expertly curled a shot into the top corner to reduce the deficit to two before slack marking again left the striker unmarked and he picked his spot to seal the game before the scoring was rounded off a minute from time by another powerful effort from McEvoy.