Huddersfield Town 1, Barnsley 3

May 16 2006 By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

The best for Town came as early as the ninth minute when David Graham played Danny Schofield into the box, only for Nick Colgan to block well as he raced from his line.

That move summed up the purpose in Town's first-half play - Danny Adams and Schofield underlining the workrate with some excellent tackling back - but Barnsley always looked dangerous on the break with Martin Devaney playing (unusually) on the right and Hayes down the left.

From the half-hour mark onwards, Town struggled to hold the ball up front and as the second half progressed, they resorted too much to hoofing the ball in search of Andy Booth.

He had gone close with an early volley and worked hard in the air to try and create openings, but midfielders Brian Howard and Stephen McPhail bossed it for Barnsley once they'd broken the deadlock from the spot, after Schofield was harshly adjudged to have pushed Hayes in the box.

If that was hard to take, the slack marking which allowed the second from a corner and third from Rachubka's parry were even harder to stomach.

It wasn't until Martin McIntosh was pushed up front in the closing stages to join Booth and substitute Pawel Abbott that Town even suggested they might nick an aggregate equaliser, and you could sense the agony as most in blue and white stripes sank to their knees at the final whistle.

Failure from a season which for so long promised so much was a bitter pill to swallow, especially with no Cardiff final as a sweetener.