Eversley Football Club

After two terrible recent performances an away game against a usually tough AFC Froyle side, on a cow field not a football pitch was probably the last thing we needed. With several players missing due to illness and injury we had a make shift starting 11 but welcomed Simon Wright in to the A’s for the first time.

Predictably the first 15 minutes saw a number of errors from both sides, the “pitch” was playing a major part in dragging down the quality of the football, it would be no exaggeration to say this is the worst playing surface I have ever witnessed and I’ll include our own old ground in that statement!

Eventually we started to get to grips with it and forged one or two good chances, both PJ and Gary should have scored but we’ll give them the benefit of blaming quite obvious bobbles (only this week). A major difference in this weeks performance was the combative display in midfield from Brucie and Marcus, a battling mentality we have lacked in recent weeks was serving us well and we dominated the midfield for the majority of the half.

Bruce gave us a lead we deserved from a great free kick driven around the wall form 25 yards out and that was the break we needed to push on. We soon got a second when Bertie cut inside from the right played a one - two with Tommy and scopped the ball out of the mud over the Froyle keepr to give a 2-0 half time lead.

Although we had dominated we hadn’t pressed Froyle enough and they were winning plenty of the second balls. Fortunately, with the exception of one good save from Ryan, Froyle hadn’t really threatened to score but on this unpredictable pitch a mistake would be easy to make and it could prove costly.

We kicked off the second half and Froyle came at us with more urgency, throwing more players forward in to our box but rarely causing us any real problems as both Beardo and Wrighty showed great composure at the back, Vener’s was tackling everything and even Smit managed to keep up with the Froyle winger this week.

Froyle’s good spell lasted about 15 minutes, but sensing we could deal with anything that came our way we slowly eased our way back to controlling the game in Midfield. Bertie notched his second with a brilliant piece of skill on the touchline as he nutmegged the centre back and slotted past the keeper to put us 3-0 up. Coxy came on for Bertie and Smit moved in to midfield, almost immediately, from a corner Smit got a hip to the ball and turned it in for a 4-0 lead.

Things were going well until a horrific tackle on Brucie saw him leave the field with a bad looking shin injury, surely a red card offence but no action was taken by the ref. This brought about some changes with Smit and Bruce coming off to be replaced by Nashy and Bankso. The remainder of the half was played out with out much incident apart from a great chance for Nash, whose first touch was so good it surprised everyone including him and he fell over in the box as he was about to shoot when he should really have scored. Nash adding a 5th would have been the icing on the cake but this was still a vast improvement and much needed change of recent form. Lets hope it continues.

Team: Edwards, Venables, Beard, Wright, J.Smith(1) (Nash), R.Taylor(2) (Cox), Headington, McCormack(1) (Banks), Hall, G.Smith, Jacobs