We knew a couple of players were injured but come Sunday morning at the arranged meeting point we finally got 12 people there! Of these players Gaz was really not able to play, both Chis and Ben hadn’t played in months and we had to play Twinkle in goal, Funny how this game was an early start and a fair distance away, last week at home to Blackwater we had 17 players!
This match was between 2 unbeaten teams so we knew we were in for a battle, what I didn’t realize was what sort of battle. I understand all good teams have a competitive streak? But this was in my opinion beyond your normal strong arm stuff, some of the tackles that took place today were quite naughty!
I changed the team around to suit who we had available, Twinkle in goal, Nobby took Will’s place at centre back, with Will filling in for Joey in midfield, in the absence of our normal 2 wide players, Gaz was there but injured, Craig and Ben filled these places with Chris taking Craig’s place upfront.
The game kicked off, after a minute a lovely though ball by one of the Wheelwright midfield players over the top cut Ian and Nobby in two, their striker calmly controlled the ball and dinked it past Twinks (Nobby nearly got it?) the worse possible start. For the next 10 or 15 minutes Wheelwrights had a fair bit of control but didn’t achieve much, other than put in several big challenges?
On 19 minutes Ben had a good snap shot which their keeper could only parry, unfortunately there was nobody on hand to pick up the pieces.
By the time the half time whistle went I felt we were the better side but Skedy was up against it on his own up front really?
The second half started how the first half finished with Eversley having more of the ball. In the 57 minute frustration got the better of one of the wheelwright defender who, let’s just say took Hoggie out, there could be no complaints, the guy was shown a straight red.
We still pushed but I felt we were never going to score? On 65 minutes a speculative shot from 30 yards simply beat Twinkle, 2-0 down, with 25 minutes to go we may as well lose 5-O as 2-0 so we pushed an extra man up, on 77 minutes, Giggsy smashed the ball home after a mix up in their box after the ball hit Skedy 2-1, we were back in it.
Completely against the run of play they had another speculative shot which again beat Twinkle, 3-1 to 10 men? We pushed even harder and in the 90th minute Ben put Will through who was taken down in the area. PENALTY! Craig took the kick only to see their keeper save it, The ref blew for the kick to be retaken but Twiggy wasn’t taking any chances or prisoners and followed up smashing the ball home, the ref let Twiggy’s goal stand? 3-2.
We played out the last 6 minutes or so of injury time but it wasn’t going to be our day, Twinkle did us a favour going in goal, he can’t be blamed for the goals, on another day we could have easily won but that’s football for you. Wheelwrights are a good team, the best we’ve played this season but overall I felt we were the better team, they reckon they had players missing as well, would have been good to play with both teams at full strength?
Had we had a full squad Ben would have probably got 20 minutes at the end, he came in and had an excellent game, he had a good touch, was as competitive as anybody on the pitch and encouraged everybody, he was blowing at the end but for me was man of the match!
Team : Twinkle, Giggsy, Ian, Nobby and Twiggy. Ben, Hoggie, Will and Craig, Chris (Gaz) and Skedy
Scorers : Giggsy and Twiggy
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