Tolaj and Stockley are on target as Valiants chalk up another win

PORT Vale overcame a numerical disadvantage to put another three points on the board. CLIVE YOULTON continues his review of the Valiants’ season...

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ON February 1 there was a Port Vale phenomenon that had only happened once in the season thus far, at Newport County, almost five months previously.

Lorent Tolaj and Jayden Stockley both scored in the same league game for the Valiants.

They helped Vale conquer Accrington Stanley 2-1.

It was to only happen one more time during the rest of the campaign but both would be regular scorers and in fact, in the last seven games of the campaign that Vale scored in, either one of them was on target.

Before the match boss Darren Moore had said that Mitch Clark's three-game ban in League Two was “a blow’ as he prepared his team.

It didn’t turn out to be as big a hindrance as Moore thought as Vale won two of the three games without him, while not losing, and Clark didn’t play in the following one either, a 2-1 success against Salford City.

That was because of the size of the squad and the quality Moore had at his disposal.

In fairness, the wing-back pairing of Clark and Jaheim Headley had been excellent up until then.

But it hardly mattered as Vale coped admirably without Clark.

Crucially, Moore stuck with the forward pairing of Stockley and Tolaj and we will never know just how those two - and Vale - would have fared if they had played together all season rather than for the final four months.