Match Report

A nice sunny day albeit with an arctic wind gusting down the pitch to freshen things up a bit. Team numbers were up to 14 following the return of Gary Rosslee, Steve Blanchard, Colin Ebdon and Trevor Stewart resulting in a reshuffle that saw Toby Harlow and Roger French drop to the bench and Toby Manchip scuttle off to Dubai. Things were delayed slightly as Crofton''s kit turned up later than our own and then it turned out that it was an exact match for ours so a quick trip into the loft resulted in a set of banana yellow shirts being found and exchanged. Dressing room banter revolved around the continuing saga of MJ and his dodgy liaisons of the romantic kind resulting in a full set
of replacement tyres for his car.

We started the first half kicking into the wind and the early exchanges were fairly evenly matched. The ball was played around by both sides but it was Crofton who took an early lead. We pushed on and created a few chances with Paul Smith grabbing yet another goal to pull us level. Our second goal came following a good run from Pat Mongelard into the box with a shot on goal that was deflected into the path of Paul Storkey who was able to tuck the ball away. Ian Shoebridge was next to pick up a loose ball just outside the box and rifled a low shot past the keeper before he had chance to move to put us 3-1 up and in control at half-time.

The half-time break did us no favours as we seemed to lose all momentum and struggled to get back into the game in the second half. The result was that Crofton gradually cut the deficit and eventually took the lead with 5 minutes remaining and ran out 4-3 winners. Very disappointing result considering how much effort we put in to turn things around in the first half we just seemed to run out of steam.....a bit like this match report.