TEENAGE hero Wayne Curtis saved the day, and a gained a point, for Morecambe from this match. Curtis, 18, who scored against his home town club Barrow in last week's derby, was the man of the moment once again after he came on to replace Mark Ceraolo in time to grab his moment of glory. Morecambe bounced back well after the disappointment of losing against their Barrow neighbours so it was a cruel blow when the southerners broke the deadlock after half an hour. But, to their credit, Morecambe never gave up the chase and it was after a period of sustained pressure when Curtis, on the pitch for few minutes, scored with twenty minutes left.

True to form Mark Shirley, Morecambe's most creative player of the night, crossed well for Curtis to head home. After that the Shrimps could easily have won the game with plenty of good attacking movement but not too many clear cut chances.

Keeper Steve McIlhargey earned his salt early on in the match with a fine save. Stevenage attacker Steve Beevor was clear through on goal after just two minutes only to see a sure fire chance turned round by the Morecambe man.

Then Ceraolo and Harvey both wasted good chances for the home team before Jamie Barnwell scored met a cross to fire home past McIlhargey.

Matters went from bad to worse when one of Shrimps' most consistently effective players, attacking defender John Kennedy, limped off after an old leg injury flared up.

Those set backs, and a disappointing 1,000 crowd (Morecambe were more than doubling that at times last season) didn't stop Shrimps from trying and Curtis's goal was no more than the home team deserved. Morecambe 1 Stevenage 1

Team: McIlhargey, McKearney, Kennedy (Drummond), Waller, Hall, Burns, Banks, Healy, Ceraolo (Curtis), Norman, Shirley.

Morecambe are away to Hereford on Saturday and at home to Doncaster on Tuesday.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.