Match Report

Well it should come as no surprise to anyone that we once again managed to drop points to FC Poverest who are presently bottom of the division and indeed played the whole game with 10 players and in fact the last 10 minutes with 9 men.

I''m not sure I should go on really! Playing against the wind in the first half we adopted the traditional kamikaze positional formation and unsurprisingly enough a few mistakes later we were 1-0 down to a team who couldn''t believe their luck. Worse was to follow when a speculative shot materialised and Jumbo did his own juggling trick and managed to paw the ball over the line. To be fair to Jumbo he probably was struggling to control his laughter at the pantomime show going on in front of him and decided to join in the show. So 2-0 it was and we had a few more moments of madness like overhit back passes shaving the post, people falling over the ball, it was no wonder that when I looked over to the touchline one of our esteemed managers was flat on his back having respiratory problems!

We made one switch at half-time, Adam Benningfield coming on for Neil Connelly and had the benefit of playing down the slope and with the wind. At last we did start to play, using the wings with Nana and J causing the defence problems and our 2 full backs Sam Small and PG having lots of room in which to use the ball effectively. It was a PG rasping left foot drive that was half parried by their keeper and J was alert enough to coolly finish off the rebound that got us back into the game. In this 2nd period we had all the ball and basically our defence stood on the halfway line as we mounted attack after attack. We hit the bar, blazed over the bar, hit the goalkeeper when it was easier to score but with 15 minutes to go we found an equaliser from another calm finish by J finishing at the far post after good work from Barry.

To be honest we could have won the game 5-2 but the fact we didn’t was our own fault in the way we started the game and I must give FC Poverest every credit for battling for every ball and showing a tremendous team spirit despite their numerical disadvantage.

In truth the first half display was the one of the worst I have ever been part of and I have contributed to a few horror shows in my time and I think we all expected it to be a goal fest. The fact is though for every game the basics have to be done first before we can all go glory hunting.

We have 3 games to go and I think we have had a relatively successful season and played some good football at times. I hope we compete and show more tenacity in the last few games to leave down a marker for next season.

Nana was man of the match through showing some good trickery on the left hand side!