Stockley earned his place in Vale 'folklore' on derby day

AYDEN Stockley had said he wanted to go down in Port Vale folklore.

- CLIVE YOULTON

His goal at Crewe Alexandra to seal yet another 1-0 win - the Valiants eighth and final 1-0 victory of the season - went a long way to doing that.

There's nothing quite like scoring a late clincher against local rivals.

Okay it wasn’t Stoke, but Crewe was the next best thing.

The victory was certainly not pretty and it was the 15th League Two game in the campaign where Vale had scored just once.

Overall, in addition to that surprising statistic, there were to be 10 matches where they didn’t score at all. That's 25 matches from a 46-game season where Vale scored one or fewer - remarkable in a promotion season.

Having been booed off against Barrow, there were cheers in south Cheshire.

Crewe just didn’t possess the armoury to score against Vale, despite numerous chances.

Another clean sheet suggested Vale’s defence were in control, but once again that was misleading.

It was more a case of Crewe giving a demonstration of just why they had won just once at home in their previous seven League Two matches.

Stockley’s close-range header in the 86th minute elevated Vale into the top three.

Moore made four changes to the team that were beaten by Barrow as in came the four inform players who had been dropped - Ryan Croasdale, Rhys Walters, Mitch Clark and Lorent Tolaj.