Windscale gave their most mediocre home performance of the season in the Wearside League to go down 4-1 at home to Hartlepool.
The home side conceded early in the game and it was an uphill fight from there.
They consistently gave the ball away unnecessarily making the opposition look a better team than they actually were.
Hartlepool added to their lead when goalkeeper Ian Studholme was adjudged to have brought down a Hartlepool attacker, probably the correct decision, when they were both challenging for a long ball into the Windscale penalty area.
Studholme received a caution for the offence and ended up picking the resultant spot kick out of the back of his net. A niggly game reached the half-time interval with the visitors holding onto their 2-0 lead.
Worse was to follow 20 minutes into the second period. Substitute Joe Atkinson conceded a second penalty when a shot at goal struck him on the hand.
The match official deemed this to be a deliberate movement and the player was subsequently red-carded and dismissed for the offence.
The resultant penalty kick was despatched beyond Studholme increasing Hartlepool’s lead to three goals.
The next 10 minutes proved to be the best showing of the game from Windscale, despite being a man short. They created several scoring opportunities, one of which was fired home by Lewis Jolly.
This however proved to be a false dawn with Hartlepool adding a further goal at the death to complete a sorry display by the Atoms.
It was not helped by the gamesmanship from the visitors throughout the game but was one performance that the hosts can certainly learn from going into the remaining fixtures.
