Scorers: Jannece, Manu.
Another friendly, another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory! It is beginning to be a bit worrying how we are contriving to throw away winning positions in the final 10 minutes of games – let us hope we are getting this out of the way before the league season starts.
Playing at New River for the first time this season we started the game well, and found ourselves 1-0 up quickly, when excellent work down the right between Les and Dan W saw the latter whip in a vicious ball to find Janno trundling into the box unmarked. After about 7 touches to get the ball under control, he shinned it past the keeper. 2 goals in a productive preseason for the midfield general.
EBOG were pressing us, and had a really excellent striker, who they utilised by pumping the ball over our defence for him to get in the space behind. They had the most cast iron penalty I have ever seen turned down – firstly Jeats tried to swap shirts with the striker early, and then Smudge in goal came out and flattened him. It was a bit embarrassing actually!
We went 2-0 up when Les was sent through and calmly dinked over the onrushing keeper. At that, complacency crept into our game. Shortly before half-time, they grabbed one back with a shockingly poor goal to concede. A needless corner was conceded, which looked pretty harmless until 3 of our players all jumped for it, none of them called, so all got in each other’s way. The ball then broke to an EBOG who hit a tame shot that trickled through the legs of a player on the line. Appalling.
After half-time, we made a few changes and our solid midfield evaporated, with EBOG running at us at will. They equalised when Simmo lost an up n’ under in the sun and the skilful striker hit a beautiful lob. With 10 to go they took the lead with another keystone cop piece of defending, but I can’t remember what happened.
We rallied after that and nearly snatched an equalizer when Ben Carter hit the post with a volley, and Jeats has asked me to mention his ‘near miss’, where he had a shot that went over.
Some good points but a bad result lads. We are the only AP team out of the bottom division of their section, but should we continue like this, that is where we will find ourselves this time next year.
Team: Smith, McLoughlin, Jeator, Simpson, Wootten, Jannece, Hubbard, Harvey, Wilding, Carter, Manu, Soloman, Saunders, Nicholas, Moruzzi.
