Last updated 18:49, Friday, 28 March 2008

Carlisle Utd 2 Luton 1: So now it’s official: the law of averages will not be observed at Brunton Park.

If ever Carlisle United’s relentless run of home success was going to be terminated, it was here, last night, during a second-half performance which was not so much ugly as an utter gargoyle.

This hideous 45-minute ordeal saw Carlisle, third in League One, stumbling and slicing their way to nervous safety against the division’s 23rd-best team who hadn’t got near a victory in a dozen attempts.

United, having glided to a comfortable 2-0 interval lead, were by the end fenced in their own half as Mick Harford’s doughty troops outpassed them and gave little respect to the idea that winning at home is something that Carlisle simply do.

Now hit pause. Check the numbers above this report. Yes, United won again. For the 13th successive engagement on their own pitch, John Ward’s players hoovered up the points. If they can contrive to win a match in such unpromising circumstances, well, you can probably write your own ending to the tale of this ever-engrossing season.

“We were snatching at things, clearing balls – some overhit and some underhit – and generally making life difficult for ourselves,” observed Ward, without fear of contradiction.

“But over 46 games, you’re going to have to dig out games like this. Let’s be pleased with the result and put the performance in the bottom drawer.”

Rake away the debris of Carlisle’s second-half display and the statistics this team continue to punch out are nothing less than astonishing. Like Pac-Man gobbling up dots on a screen, United have consumed team after team after team on their own ground.

After clearing their 13th straight hurdle at Brunton Park, thereby extending their history-making home run, Ward’s side now venture to Swindon’s County Ground in three days’ time, where victory will be their seventh off the reel in League One, home and away: another club record.

None of this seemed plausible when United were making a 2-1 advantage appear as perilous as possible last night, but it also needs to be said that they were solid value for their two-goal interval lead which, during a rampaging passage of play, might even have been extended.

The opening exchanges, save for a David Bell shot and a Simon Hackney volley which Dean Brill repelled, are best left unreported. It took roughly 21 minutes for either side to conjure anything meaningful, but that was quite sufficient for the hosts to take the lead.

First, Grant Smith battered a well-timed volley towards the bottom corner, drawing a scrambling save from Brill. What followed was utter simplicity, as Marc Bridge-Wilkinson bent his corner into the box and Danny Livesey cruised into space to thump home his second goal in four days.

Seven minutes on and another defender was appearing in Luton’s box to convincing effect. Carlisle’s second was rooted in another corner, conceded by Brill after Evan Horwood’s looping cross.

From the delivery, Peter Murphy had a blast saved, as did Bridge-Wilkinson, but then Chris Lumsdon lofted the ball back into the area and Murphy timed his rise to perfection to nod the ball past the advancing Brill.

Seconds later, Cleveland Taylor and David Raven linked fluently down the right, the latter flashed over a cross that flew millimetres beyond the sliding Danny Graham, and you got to thinking it might be an evening which would end with United’s goal difference being forced to submit to a steroid test.

Not so. A poked Keith Keane effort and a dangerous Paul McVeigh volley at the end of the first half gave notice that Luton were awakening. Still, none of us saw quite what was coming. Bell, far too classy to sink into League Two with his fellow Hatters come May, halved the deficit in the 51st minute but twisting away from Hackney and ripping a shot past Keiren Westwood from 25 yards.

That prompted Harford’s side to look for more gaps in the Cumbrian defence, as United’s own passing and conviction disappeared completely from view.

Paul Furlong, still a sturdy leader of the line at 39, blasted over from decent territory after sound work from Richard Jackson and the excellent McVeigh.

A rare United foray saw Keane hack clear a dangerous Lumsdon cross, but back flew Luton, with pace and purpose: a McVeigh missile Westwood tipped over, a couple of bundled goals ruled out by the referee for fouls in the area, and a general spell where the visitors looked as implausible as relegation candidates as United did as members of a three-team contest for two automatic promotion spots.

This fretful journey to victory, where the only honourable mentions go to United’s defenders, also received a pair of unpleasant footnotes: first, when substitute Jeff Smith was carried off with a serious-looking ankle injury after a thumping tackle; and when the under-performing Cleveland Taylor’s 79th-minute substitution was greeted by an outbreak of ironic cheering that Livesey, after the whistle, was quite right to call in for critical attention.

Before they pipe up again, those responsible need to inform the world of a single instance when such inane mockery has had a positive effect on a player, or a team. Answers to the usual address.

Back to Livesey for another serving of common-sense: “We’re going to get on the training pitch to put right what went wrong in the second half,” said the centre-half. “The result masks the performance, in a way.

“But at the end of the season you don’t look back at these games and say ‘We didn’t play well’. All that matters is we got the points.” Correct on both counts. Last night might go down as the evening complacency was shoved in front of a firing squad at Brunton Park.

But also as an occasion when Carlisle – albeit traumatically – chalked up yet another victim.