Eversley Football Club

Knowing that we had no chance of progressing in this seasons champions league style league cup, meant we had a chance to gain some much needed fitness work and give some players that have lacked game time a decent run out. Unfortunately I think the entire starting 11 assumed that just because we couldn’t advance in this competition, the game wasn’t so important.

A lack of matches hasn’t helped us in either of our last two games and while this can be an acceptable reason for the slower tempo of our second half performance against Headley Utd, its certainly not a good excuse for the way we played in the first 15 minutes against Hartley Wintney. Hartley were much sharper than us, had more energy and worked harder than we did for most of the first half. It took a full 18 minutes before we managed to piece together anything that even resembled football. When we did we looked dangerous against a side we should be beating comfortably given our pre-christmas turkey form.

have weathered the early storm our first good chance fell to Matt York after 20 minutes and he should have put us ahead, albeit against the run of play. We were improving as the half progressed and managed to take the lead when from a goal kick the Hartley keeper dropped the ball in slightly short to find PJ waiting to volley the ball back past the out of position keeper, first time from a full 45 yards (you’ll hear about this again I’m sure).

We then got caught dwelling on the ball when Tommy took too long to to pick a pass on the half way line, the resulting break away gifting Hartley an equaliser which was no less than they deserved. This had been our worst 45 minutes of football for some time.

Believing we had addressed our frailties we kicked off the second half in a more positive manor and began to piece together some patches of decent football, Yorky should have again put us in front when through one on one but didn’t really test the keeper and it stayed level until. From a corner Ryan failed to get a strong hand to the ball and could do no more than push it in to the roof of the net to give Hartley the lead.

We quickly had a chance to equalise but Yorky somehow managed to find the post with the majority of the goal open. As we again tired towards the end of the game Hartley broke through our tiring defence, the winger finding plenty of space and time to blast past Ryan for Hartley’s third.

The result may not have affected our standing this season but the nature of the loss was concerning to say the least. With two tough games that we need to win coming up we have to show plenty of improvement, a ruthless streak in front of goal and a sharpness to our passing have to be found again.

Team: Edwards, Cox, J.Smith (Taylor), Beard, Venables, Paskell (Nash), Headington, Phelps-Jones, Hall, York, Jacobs (1) (Lightfoot)