Football: Addison's survival hopes dealt late blow

X Scarborough 1 Roberts 42 Peterborough United 1 Scott 7 Half- time: 1-1 Attendance: 4,769

THE MANAGERIAL wheel turned full circle for Colin Addison yesterday. Twenty-seven years after launching his career by taking Hereford United into the Football League, he returned to the non-League nether regions as the man in charge of Scarborough's doomed Third Division survival mission.

Back in 1972 Addison graduated to League management with the help of Ronnie Radford's wonder goal and Hereford's FA Cup slaying of the not- so mighty Magpies. Sadly for him and the majority of the 4,769 crowd, there were no heroics for Scarborough yesterday. Addison and his players had been in the dressing-room for five minutes, having come from behind to draw with Peterborough at the McCain Stadium, when news of Carlisle's dramatic victory reached them.

The chips were down, it had to be said, for Addison and his side at the McCain Stadium. Two timely victories may have lifted them off the foot of the table but only another win was certain to save them.

Not that such pressure was alien to Addison. In his time in the scorching hot seat at the Vicente Calderon nine years ago, taking Atletico Madrid from fourth bottom to fourth top of the Primera Liga, and to the brink of a Uefa Cup place, was not enough to keep him in the employ of Jesus Gil.

In the North Yorkshire cauldron of the McCain, ironically packed for the first time since Wolverhampton Wanderers attended its Football League baptism 12 years ago, Addison's team found the early pace too hot to handle.

Peterborough, who started the afternoon with an outside chance of a play- off place, were sharp, quick and ahead from the seventh minute. Darren Roberts failed to clear David Farrell's left-wing corner and Richard Scott, some 12 yards out, dispatched a shot on the turn that eluded the clutches of Tony Parks.

At the other end, Mark Tyler was untroubled until the 39th minute, when his right-hand post kept out Graeme Atkinson's close-range volley. Three minutes later Scarborough were level when they broke forward and Nathan Jones fed the ball to Roberts, who beat Tyler with a low left-foot shot.

Scarborough's fightback ought to have taken them into the lead five minutes into the second-half. Michael McNaugh-ton's long ball put Roberts through with only Tyler to beat. It was, though, too clear a chance. The big striker had time to dwell upon the possible significance of his shot and duly side-footed the ball over the bar. It proved to be a costly miss.

Not until Parks and his colleagues reached the dressing room, passing the mural depicting Neil Warnock and his team with the Conference trophy in 1987, did the players from the first club to benefit from automatic promotion to the Football League discover that they had, after all, become the latest to suffer from it.