Report

We were pitted against the Castle for our first game in 4 weeks due to spare fixture weekends and the big freeze, unfortunately such a long lay off had an effect on our performance as very few in the squad were 100% at the races today.

Conditions were good for a decent game of footy today, a slightly dodgy ‘small’ goal raised a few eyebrows and some over zealous dress code stipulations from the ref amused most on and off the pitch!  We started well and playing down the slope we looked by far the stronger team and set up camp in the Castle half, both full backs were able to push forward and we were getting the ball out to the wingers which was making the Castle midfield work hard.

Lack of match practice was preventing us from finding the final pass or finishing our chances from the edge of the box, of which we had quite a few.  This added to a small amount of panic at the back and some questionable handling from Jim was causing many to get frustrated and we needed to settle down and play our football.  Fortunately after about 20 minutes some good battling on the right side saw the ball break to Gilles 40 yards out, he then drove forward skipping past 3 defenders before firing into the far corner from 20 yards 1-0.

The goal settled us down and it looked like we were more likely to score a second than the Castle were to equalise, but with 5 minutes to go before half time we were caught pushing too far forward and a quick ball over our defence saw a 1 on 1 between Jim and the Castle striker.  As the ball bounced between them Jim fumbled the ball onto the strikers head and as he tried to grab the rebound which had gone past him he wiped the striker out, right in the face, penalty!  The striker dusted himself off and sent Jim the wrong way for the equaliser 1-1.

We then spent the remaining 5 minutes of the half feeling sorry for ourselves and were lucky that we didn’t go behind as the Castle put us under pressure and saw more possession than us.  Just before half time we had an excellent move down the left hand side with Jenks and Ricky combining well, Jenks beat the full back and put a great cross into the box but Stu could only put his volley wide of the post with only the keeper to beat.

Half time came and a chance to settle everyone back down again, we weren’t doing much more wrong than failing to chase down loose balls quite as well as we could have done and we knew that if we just focused on completing the basics and encouraging each other we would get the result we were looking for.

The second half was not a hugely entertaining spectacle as both teams struggled to create clean chances and the game became scrappy, lots of high balls were being contested and the game became very stop start with the ref becoming increasingly involved.  With 20 minutes to go we needed to do something different so we made a couple of substitutions and also changed the formation to try and put the Castle defence under more pressure.  It took only 5 minutes to pay dividends as some good work on the right hand side released Sam into the penalty area and from 15 yards out and an acute angle he fired across the keeper and into the top corner 2-1. 

We now made a mistake in not continuing the pressure going forward and instead sat back and invited the Castle to put pressure on our defence, a couple of subs later to run down the clock did nothing more than make us very quiet and with only a minute left on the clock we were punished.  We failed to clear 3 corners in succession and then a goalmouth scramble saw a Castle player head a low cross into the bottom corner from 6 yards out 2-2.

A minute later the ref blew for full time, we were all disappointed that we hadn’t played anywhere near our best and felt like we had thrown away 2 points.  It’s important to remember that our opposition were a decent side who beat Parkway in their previous game so there was certainly no shame in the result.

Onwards and upwards