Match Report

At least we can say we are unbeaten in 2006 but really we should have been celebrating our first victory of the season. A good turnout with a squad of 14 players meeting at the appointed ground in plenty of time on a freezing cold Sunday morning. Just the thing to run off those Christmas pounds. A mention for Toby Harlow as Clubman of the game for not only naming himself as sub but then agreeing to referee the game as Ditton’s ref had failed to appear.

We started the game very well applying a lot of pressure, closing down the Ditton defence and creating a number of chances in the first 20 minutes. One of these was a long ball played over the top of the defence by Ian Coles which landed perfectly for me lob the keeper from the edge of the penalty box to open the scoring. We continued pressing forward and were rewarded with a second goal scored by Colin Mant putting us in the rarest of situations of being in the lead! This couldn’t carry on and true to form we allowed Ditton to run through and pull one back. Not to be outdone we continued attacking and Colin Mant soon got his second to put us 3-1 up…and this was still all in the first half. Unfortunately Ditton started to claw their way back into the game and managed to get two more goals before the whistle went. This was turning out to be a real ding dong of a game with a half-time score of 3-3.

As in previous games stopping at half-time does us no favours, as we seem to struggle to get back into games. Ditton had most of the early pressure and scored a fourth goal fairly early on, which could have spelt disaster. However we managed to contain them and gradually picked up the pace with the equaliser finally coming when Chris Bourlet appeared at pace in the six yard box and belted the ball home much to the delight of his kids when they realised that daddy had scored. We certainly shaded the last 15 minutes or so but could not find a way through even when Toby Harlow (having swapped with Couch as ref) attempted a last minute header to steal the match for us.

An enjoyable game with a great changing room spirit (mainly instigated by Toby “the Juggler” Manchip) and as I said earlier we are unbeaten in 2006 - let’s try and keep it that way. Next week is against Diamond Vets and they only narrowly beat us last time out so let''s try and get that elusive first win.