Bradford Park Avenue 3, Lowestoft Town 0

IT MAY have been Halloween but there were no scares for Bradford Park Avenue at Horsfall Stadium as they cruised to their biggest Vanarama National North win of the season against ten-man Lowestoft Town.

The visitors felt the horror was the referee's 13th-minute decision to show a straight red card to Ryan Jarvis.

But Avenue boss Martin Drury had all his treats in the first half and the tricks came in the second half facing the Cemetery Road end as his side dominated only to have a nightmare in front of goal.

Jarvis had certainly frightened the home side's defence before his contentious early departure at a corner kick. The left winger was marking Chib Chilaka and put an arm out to keep in front of his man but caught him in the face.

The Trawlerboys man claimed just the palm of his hand had made contact but the referee had seen it as a forearm in Chilaka's face and had no hesitation in brandishing the red card before ordering the flag-kick to be retaken.

Avenue were already a goal to the good by then after Chilaka, who was directly involved in all of the goals, had been brought down in the area after chipping the centre back and gathering the ball.

Richard Marshall drilled in low and hard to Trawlerboys keeper Ben Killip's right-hand side.

Marshall also had a hand in all of the goals as he got behind the visitors' defence to pull Alex Pursehouse's superbly-weighted through-ball back to Chilaka, who netted a fierce shot at the second attempt after his first was blocked.

That was just before the half-hour mark – and in first-half stoppage time, Chilaka was again brought down and Marshall picked the same side from the spot as Killip dived the other way.

A delighted Drury said: "I'm pleased but more for the players because they have been putting a lot of effort in but not getting the results they deserve.

"I thought we dominated most of the game and played well, so I would say 3-0 was a scoreline that reflected the game.

"We didn't really do enough to have won it by a bigger margin, even in the second half when we had most of the possession and a man advantage."