Match Report

Wasteful Farnborough made to pay

There was a threat all week that today’s game may not go ahead on our home pitch due to the unsettled weather, so we made backup plans to play at STC ground in New Eltham. Fortunately, we were informed on Saturday that the pitch was playable, so we had the rare luxury of playing a game on the bottom pitch at home. The pitch was a bit heavy in places, but we were still grateful of having the opportunity to play here.

FOBG Squad: Tom Girling (GK), Giles Foister, Waine Hetherington, Peter Harvey, George Kleanthous, Sinisa Gracanin, Jay Hardy, Simon Thomas, Diccon Kaenzig, Danny Mullins, Chisa Mkala, Kypros Michael.

Referee: 10 /10. Excellent refereeing throughout the 90 minutes.

Kit sponsor: The Dog and Duck, Outwood.

Manager:  George Kleanthous.

Interim Chief Football Correspondent:  George Kleanthous.

We knew that we had to be on top of our game today, this is the only opponent historically that we have never beaten and is always the hardest fixture on our schedule (history shows we have not drawn against them either, it has been losses all the way). Despite this, we have been on a bit of a purple patch ourselves so felt it would be a good test for us. The result shows that it ended up as it always has, however, this does not tell the full story.

For once, Farnborough started well and without a shadow of doubt were by far the superior team for at least the first half an hour. The passing was crisp, the link-up play was extremely good and the chances flowed. In that first half an hour, Bird in Hand were camped in their own half having to deal with wave after wave of Farnborough pressure and without fear of contradiction, on the balance of play Farnborough should have been at least four goals to the good and out of sight. The fact that we weren’t was down to one factor and one factor alone. Finishing. Plain and simple. The chances we made were not “half chances”, they were gilt-edged chances that should have been put away with ease, alas they were squandered and with every chance we missed, we would go on and repeat the same, time and time again. If the decision making had been better, it would almost certainly have given us the best chance of beating Bird in Hand for the first time ever. We had four opportunities where we got behind their defence and if a simple sideways pass to an unmarked teammate standing three yards out had been played the ball could have been rolled into an empty net. On all four occasions the ball was either blasted high and wide or hit straight at the keeper. We were made to pay for these misses in emphatic fashion.

Bird in Hand had struggled to get any type of possession such was Farnborough’s grip on the game and so they had resorted to hitting long hopeful balls up field which were either easily mopped up by our centre backs or well overhit running safely through to Tom or off for a goal kick.

On one of Bird in Hand's long hopeful punts down the middle of the park, we made our first defensive error and were made to pay. A mixture of getting the ball stuck under our feet on the heavy surface and kicking it straight to the opponent and not clearing the ball away meant that the ball fell kindly to one of their players who carried the ball behind our back line, played a pass across to an unmarked teammate standing three yards out who had the easy task of passing the ball into an empty net. The lesson in decision making was clearly not lost on us and it was about to be shoved down our throats again.

Despite all the dominance shown up to this point, they say goals change games and this was certainly the case here. Within five minutes we witnessed an almost exact carbon copy of the first goal where we needlessly gave the ball away and they strolled in behind our defence, their player passed the ball sideways to a teammate who rolled the ball into the net for goal number two.

Another goal for the opposition came about when we were caught on the break, were short on defensive cover and a good through ball to their attacker was tucked away nicely.

In the last 15 minutes leading up to half time we suddenly forgot how to pass, we forgot how to defend, and we forgot how to communicate. Sadly, we would carry all of these negative traits into the second half.

We spoke at half-time about how when we pressed our opponent, we had success so felt that we could still rescue something from the game as long as we could get back to doing the simple things that had worked well for us at the start of the game. We came out of the break and for some inexplicable reason decided to play a much higher line against a front line that clearly had the edge on us for pace. We didn’t really get the opportunity to test our pressing play as barely a few minutes into the second half we conceded a fourth, and then what followed at regular intervals were more goals. A fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. There was a real familiar pattern to almost all of their second half goals in that they were mostly terrible passes from our players that were easily cut out and never reached their intended targets and then followed up with through balls played in behind our defence leaving Tom hugely exposed in one-on-one situations that he had no power to prevent from ending up in anything other than another goal.

A defensive issue that was evident today was that the back line were not in sync when trying to play offside, thus why we were continually caught out with arms going up looking for an offside call but the forward player not being remotely close to actually being offside. However, it is fair to say that this was not anything like our regular back four where the understanding has been much greater in this respect. Losing someone as influential as our captain Michael like we did a few weeks ago was always going to have a negative affect and he is difficult to replace.

Our heads were down and some players were clearly finding it a struggle to find motivation to contribute for a lot of the second half, however, such is the fighting spirit of this side that for the last 15 minutes of the game it was good to see that we found the determination to try and get something out of the game, albeit nothing more than pride and it was rewarded with two goals, one firstly from Chisa and a second from Jay. Both of these goals had unsurprisingly come from a spell where we put the opposition under pressure, they started to give the ball away and we once again dominated possession, all of the things that have made us a hard team to beat this season.

There have been times this season where maybe the odd individual player has had an off day, but the deficiency was covered by the rest of the team picking up the slack. Today, the reality is that sadly most players played well under par, we needlessly gave the ball away all over the pitch and our passing, finishing and most importantly communication was nowhere near the high standards we have been playing to for most of the season. Berating each other’s mistakes has never been helpful and is one area that we must cut out. This may be a blip; we could use a whole raft of excuses but that is not what is necessary. We need to dust ourselves down, regroup and go again. No excuses, no individual blame. We win as a team, and we lose as a team. It is said that the sign of a good side is how they are able to handle and overcome adversity. On our previous losses this season we have come back and put in a strong performance and got a positive result. Our challenge is to do exactly that this week and it is the minimum expectation that we do just that.  

Man-of-the-match:  

Two outfield players whose energy levels and determination never faltered throughout the whole 90 minutes were Diccon and Danny and despite an extremely difficult day between the sticks, Tom also played his part in keeping the score from being even worse. These three gained most of the votes and it was Diccon who just nicked the overall majority.