For probably the first time this season we have had almost an entire squad of players to choose from, with the exception of two players who were unavailable everyone seemed to make themselves available. With this in mind we were playing a bit of a bogey team for us in Platt.
But with the squad available we were very confident of getting a result, everything was going well for once people were on time, we got a good warm up and everyone was rearing to go at the first whistle, apart from a small mistake by Marcus who recovered well after the ball ran through his legs we dominated the first half and created plenty of chances, but did not score whether it was a poor final ball or poor finishing we just couldn’t get a breakthrough. Although at times we played a little too long at times when we got the ball on the floor we played the best football we have played so far this season.
Their goalkeeper was there best player in the first half which tells you the story of this period, the team actually looked like a team that had been together for a while we defended well, worked for each other and could have gone in 2 or 3 up. But this is Pembury Saturday so there is always going to be a twist in the tale, things were going far to well. On the stroke of half time Jason slipped while jockeying the oncoming forward which led to him having a free shot on goal making it 1-0. Although Jason slipped it was by no means his fault for the goal the forward had been allowed to run to far with the ball.
We went in at half time disappointed but upbeat that we could get back into the game. The second half didn’t really start for us though, we let them come back into the game and then the Pembury curse happened again, the centre forward took a blatant dive (which he later admitted) the ref not only bought it but paid full price! Penalty which they converted to make 2-0. We felt hard done by (which was to be made worse) but started to get back in the game.
Then the ref who we had at Lanes End the week before and did really well really lost the plot. I don’t particularly like blaming refs as I feel players have a lot to do with the refs bad decisions, but this time it was all the refs own doing. Tom Bowyer who is getting better and better (just needs to believe in himself more) won the ball from the centre forward and started to carry it up the pitch, he was then tripped by the striker who decided to stamp on Tom while he was on the floor, as you can imagine our players were upset and decided to put there point across rather forcibly. The referee quite rightly booked Dave but decided to only book their striker when I asked why it wasn’t a ref he said it was an accident, so why did he book him at all?
After this our players lost their heads, usually I would criticise them for this, but I did the same with their manger and supporters and if he wasn’t 50 years old with a worse hip than me it might have kicked off especially when he said Tom was making a meal out of it as his player had only stamped on him with one foot! (idiot). We had chances after this to get back in the game but didn’t take them, once again by not taking our chances we have lost a game we could quite easily have won.
Team
M.Lawrence
G.Hughes
J.Gale
T.Bowyer
L.Smith
L.Gent
B.Leete
D.Hymers
M.Wood
A.Evans
B.Brooker
A.Donaldson
C.Stairs
T.Gent