Match Report

Well first of all may I say ‘what a difference a week makes’.

We arrived at the club with the sun beating down like it was still July and not nearly October; I personally still stand firm my words that there is need to worry about claims of “global warming” and “climate change” as far as I am concerned this has been made up by the government to detract us from other important issues like the fact that crab sticks are no longer called crab sticks, they are now called seafood sticks! When did this happen and why wasn’t we notified? I’m sure when Opal Fruits and Marathon changed their names respectively the public were notified as part of the marketing campaign. At least JIF had the decency to tell us they were changing their name to CIF, although it took me a while to realise this after weeks of cleaning the house with lemon juice and having stomach pumps courtesy of pancakes topped with a white chalky scouring agent……………….but anyway we digress!!!

We lined up as the following

Gary Rosslee GK
Danny Saines LB
Matt Wright CB
Andy Cobham CB
Steve Watson RB
Neil Connelly LM
Daragh Nott CM
Paul Tanton CM
Rich Davies RM
Adam Dawson CF
Pete Harvey CF

Subs
Tony Simpson
Charlie Matthews

From the off we were very relaxed and comfortable on the ball with our midfield orchestrating the passing game which we knew we had in us, the early signs were there that this could be a very good morning for us if we continued to play to our strengths. Funnily enough it was Maidstone who actually forced the first save of the game, their attacker hit a sweet dipping volley from the edge of the box which was tipped over….in an acrobatic / camera save / fashion (delete where applicable) by the FOBGC goalkeeper. It seems last weeks intensive wrist training regime has paid dividends, although my vision now seems to have taken a turn for the worst (hmm weird)???!!

We continued to press forward and create chances; most notably Neil Connelly was unlucky not to hit the target with a diving header at the far post after an excellent piece of wing play. Our two forwards Adam and Pete could sense that there would be goals in this game, and it was more of a case of when they would score and how many they would get between them rather than IF.

Now the only downside of playing in goal and doing the match report each week is that it is hard sometimes to see how the goals actually go in as you can lose all perception of distance, difficulty and quality etc so here is how our 6 goals were scored if memory serves me correctly from down the other end...

Goal 1
• Good work from an FOBGC player out wide, a cut back pass across the goal and finished by an FOBGC player into an empty net leaving the Maidstone GK with no chance.
Goal 2
• See above
Goal 3
• See above
Goal 4
• See above
Goal 5
• See above
Goal 6
• See above

Maidstone simply could not deal with us, and there were occasions when Maidstone just did not want to be out there. One of their blokes on the sideline had the following to say to one of our players on the line ‘if we had known how young you all were we wouldn’t have turned up in the first place’! Maidstone’s confidence and normally direct dangerous football was nowhere to be seen and there were occasions where our play was almost dragged down to the same level which nearly let them in on a few occasions but to no end result, but the threat was always there.

The Maidstone goalkeeper pulled off a number of good saves to keep the score in single figures and Daragh missed a sitter of a header from what looked to be about 6 yards out from where I was standing, I later learned from Daragh it was actually 30 yards out and he was being pulled all over the place...although nobody else confirmed this claim!
However the ‘Ronny Rosenthal’ award this week goes to Pete Harvey who inexplicably fired the ball over the open goal after another dissecting move inside the Maidstone box, I am sure this was a maximum of 3 yards out. Hopefully Pete will not retain the trophy next week!

This all in all was a solid workmanlike team display and it was good to get the first win and clean sheet under our belts, and long may the latter continue as I may be able to write the match reports during the game!

A big thank you to Charlie Matthews who filled in at right back in the second half who nearly created a goal and nearly scored but for the Maidstone goalkeeper again!

I did not hang around for too long to see who got the MOM award but I noticed Robbie Keane got the Star Man in today’s Sun Dream team for his 4 haul on Saturday so I can only assume Adam scooped the honours on Sunday with his own 4 goal display, although I very much doubt Vic allowed him to take the match ball home!!

Our other 2 goals came courtesy of Neil Connelly and Pete Harvey.

Roll on next week to our game with Wellcome Vets and hopefully another 4 star performance.