Harrogate Town: ‘Jack-trick’ Muldoon brings relief to Wetherby Road

The Sulphurites beat Oldham Athletic 3-0 at Wetherby Road on Saturday to end a five-match winless run in the fourth tier which stretched all the way back to November 23.

Leading 1-0 through Jack Muldoon’s early opener, Town effectively wrapped up all three points when the same player doubled their advantage with a clinical strike on 73 minutes.

And the 32-year-old forward – who went on to complete his hat-trick late on – revealed that there was a palpable sense of relief evident as the home players celebrated pulling two goals clear of the division’s bottom side.

“When we got the second we all bundled over in that corner and everyone was delighted, it was like ‘thank God for that’ because it takes a bit of weight off your shoulders,” Muldoon revealed.

“At 1-0 you don’t know what can happen in this league. Whether you are bottom or top, you just don’t know what’s going to happen so the second goal came at a good time.

“It was a good day all round, really. A good game for everyone.

“Football is about momentum so it’s about starting with this, hopefully going on and getting a good result on Tuesday [in the quarter-finals of the EFL Trophy] and then an even better one next Saturday.”

Muldoon broke the deadlock after 17 minutes of Saturday’s contest when he demonstrated his predatory instincts inside the Oldham six-yard-box to convert Lewis Page’s inviting cross from the left.

Town’s versatile attacker doubled the home advantage after bursting between two defenders, running through on goal and finishing confidently beyond Jayson Leutwiler following good work by Huddersfield Town loanee Brahima Diarra.

The 32-year-old then completed his treble a minute before full-time, taking his tally for the season to 10 in the process with a classy curling finish into the top corner from the edge of the penalty area.

“We’ve been working on it this week in training, obviously I’ve been working on it since I started football to be honest and we managed to get it right today, I got across my man and put it in,” Muldoon said of his first strike of the afternoon.

“The second, you’ve just got to be composed haven’t you. I know it’s easy to say that, sometimes I’m not, but in this instance I was. I had a little look up and the keeper was to the left of his goal so I put it in the other corner.

“The third, Luke could have had a shot himself, it might have got blocked, you don’t know what could have happened, but he found me and let me do the rest.”

Having been torn apart on their way to a 4-0 defeat at Newport County last weekend, Town managerial duo Simon Weaver and Paul Thirlwell opted to try out a 3-4-3 system which saw them line up against the Latics with three central defenders and George Thomson and Page operating as wing-backs.

The experiment can certainly be deemed a success, with Muldoon going on to stress the importance of being versatile enough to operate in different formations when circumstances dictate.

“We felt fine, we’ve been working on the shape, the 3-4-3 and it gives you the licence to go at people because you know there’s numbers behind you and defensively we are in good shape,” he continued. “The last six or seven years we’ve probably been playing 4-4-2 and that’s got us our success and obviously we are good at it, but at the same time we need to be versatile and we have shown that we can be.”

While hat-trick hero Muldoon was obviously Harrogate’s stand-out performer following his exploits in front of goal, there were strong displays across the board, with Thirlwell particularly impressed by the contributions of some of the least experienced members of the Sulphurites’ side.

Wolverhampton Wanderers’ loanee Lewis Richards made his Town debut on the left of a new-look back-three, while Huddersfield’s Diarra lit up proceedings at the other end of the field.

“I thought Lewis was fantastic,” said Harrogate’s number two, who took charge of proceedings at the weekend due to Weaver’s Covid-enforced absence from the dug-out. “I think it helped us that it’s a position he is used to playing for Wolves. He dropped in there seemlessly. He was aggressive with his defending and composed on the ball.

“Brahima just gets bums off seats doesn’t he. Every time he touches the ball you feel like something is going to happen.

“He’s really durable, strong and a really good footballer.

“Josh [Austerfield] was the perfect player to go on for the last 15-20 minutes once Lloyd [Kerry] took a knock to the ankle. He took the sting out of the game, helped control it, was nice and composed.”

Thrilled he may have been, though Thirlwell was adamant that nobody in the Harrogate camp will be getting too carried away off the back of what is a long-overdue success. He did however insist that his players deserve credit for the quality of the football they served up.

“The result is the be-all and end-all, that’s football,” he added.

“But, to marry it up with a really good performance, that’s what everybody wants. You want to win, but you want to win playing well.”