Scorer: Weston(3)
It was a trip to Winchmore for the 7s this week, where we were looking to maintain our good start to the season. Having only lost by one goal to Broomfield and earning a draw at Old Parks, we knew playing Winchmore wasn’t going to be easy.
The early stages of the game pretty much featured us on the back foot and Winchmore enjoying the majority of possession and attacking play. They were slowing play down and keeping the ball well in the middle. At around 20 minutes in we were one down, as they took advantage of us not closing down properly when their centre midfielder found a nice through ball in behind our defence for their winger to run onto and finish cooly.
After conceding we didn’t drop our heads and knew there was more to come from us. After striking the crossbar and going close on a few occasions it finally happened. With around 5 minutes of the half to play, Jack found Benn who smartly turned his defender via a dummy through the legs. Rumour has it the defender is still looking for the ball right now. Anyway, Benn applied a composed finish, albeit via there centre backs trailing leg, into the bottom corner and we were back in it. Half time came and it was all even 1-1.
Winchmore again had the greater possession of the ball in the early exchanges of the second half and probably looked the better side, but our defence of Will, Matt, Charlie and James stood firm and denied them any real chances.
Despite that however, it was Winchmore who took the lead when a shot from outside the box took a slight deflection, steering the ball just out of Gus’ reach. Their lead lasted all of about a minute after they gifted Benn a one-on-one from a underpowered back pass, to which he stuck away neatly to draw us level again.
During the final 20 minutes both teams had chances to win the game, with us hitting the crossbar twice and Winchmore narrowly missing from a set piece. I think it’s fair to say from the way the game was going that a draw would have been a fair result. Then, with around 3 minutes to go, Benn took full advantage of their defender misjudging the flight of the ball and completely done him for pace leaving him a one-on-one opportunity. Need I say the rest? Full time 3-2 AP, a win when we were far from our best. On we go…
MOTM : Benn Weston
