Looking back, the game on Sunday is a hard one to summarize as it contained moments of frustration but also had periods of great football.
Having made the point in the dressing room about respecting opponents and not making things difficult for ourselves, we proved it was five minutes well spent when we conceded a goal within thirty seconds of the kick off and with that lost Nick Coxon. Fortunately, the decision to take Steve Waterman from the reserves as cover proved to be a good call and he stepped in to replace Nick and performed well. Having got through a shaky opening five minute spell, we settled proceeded to settle down and control the game. We were rewarded with the equaliser on twelve minutes when Alun Evans whipped in a cross for Peter Bukovec to provide a good finish. The remainder of the half saw us to continue to press without success and at times the bit of luck that you need in front of goal to kill teams off.
At half time we were fairly relaxed and knew that if we kept our concentration, continued to get the ball wide and stretch their back four that the game would be ours. That was of course if we didn’t start the second half like the first - which we did and promptly went two - one down with a minute of the re-start when the Chimp was only able to parry a shot on the break and their attacker was able to follow up and force home. Fortunately, this spurred us into life and three goals in the next nine minutes put us four - two up and relatively safe. The first two of the these goals came from great movement and football. The first involved good inter-play between Mark Lester and Millsy and led to Woody feeding on to a through ball and crossing for Alun Evans to side foot home. The second was similar this time involving Peter and Genty down the left and resulted in Alun Evans crossing in for Les to finish. Our fourth came courtesy of route one when a rare long clearance from The Chimp that stayed in play ended up with Alun challenging their keeper and the ball breaking to Manse to slot home. A further two goals in quick succession from Pete and Alun on seventy and seventy one minutes finished the game off and even though The Chimp was luckily chipped with ten to go the game was safe.
All in all we played some good football at times but at times when the game was close we allowed them too much space in and around our area. We will certainly need to eradicate these little periods of uncertainty that we are having during games at the moment, particularly against the better sides, because if we can then the football that is being played in the remainder is good enough to beat most.
Team:
L.Baker
M.Wood
O.Allman
N.Coxon
I.Ward
M.Millins
M.Lester
G.Manser
L.Gent
A.Evans
P.Buckovec
Subs:
S.Waterman (for Coxon)
T.Gent (for L.Gent)
S.Harper (d.n.p.)