Otterbourne Football Club First Team Match Reports

Saturday 31st October 2009 - Paulsgrove 2 Otterbourne 4

Team: Flood, Kerr A, Willson, Kelly, JJ, Calder, Beasley, Taylor, T. Kerr, Knight, Davies, Milne, Milczarek, Breeze.

Enforced changes this week with Coley suffering from concussion from last weeks game against Liss, Gary Calder replacing him.

Going down to Paulsgrove is never an easy. You know what to expect and today was no different.

Confidence gained from last weeks match was evident to see as we started off very brightly and within 5 minutes we went in front. Knighter chased a ball out on the left, he skinned the fullback and put a cross in for Tom Kerr to smash into the net.

On ten minutes it got even better with some more good work by Knight forcing the Paulsgrove defence too hastily and Gareth Taylor to put the clearance over the keeper and into the net.

We were on fire and Knight had the ball in the net only to see it ruled off by the linesman.

This seemed to gee Paulsgrove up and they started to pin us back deep into our half, the normally reliable Horsted blazing wide, then Jamie making a great stop to his left to keep them at bay but eventually they broke through when Horstead wriggled wide and pulled the ball back for a Paulsgrove player to knock into the net.

The game was now end to end with Knighter setting Tom up whose shot went over the bar. Jamie then pulled off another great stop to keep us in it before half time.

Discussion took place on how to stop Paulsgrove getting the ball in behind us and out we went for the second half.

Straight after the restart Gareth got onto a through ball from Calder his shot cannoned off the bar with the defence stranded. On fifty minutes we went further in front Tom put pressure on the Paulsgrove defence who gave the ball away, Gareth picked up the ball and played in Liam he came in off the line and as the defence backed off un-leashed a powerful half volley through the keeper and into the net.

Paulsgrove came back and managed to score another goal through the evergreen Steve Leigh but today we were not going to roll over. Milne replaced Kerr and Breezer replaced the tiring Beaser.

Breezer got away from the Paulsgrove defence and pulled the ball back only for the hard working Knight to blaze wide.

Whilst Paulsgrove were arguing with each other we took a quick throw in, which again Breezer managed to get down the line and his shot was palmed poorly out to the feet of Aaron who lashed the ball into the net.

It was a really pleasing result in the manner it was achieved with everyone putting in a good shift.

We now travel to Portsmouth again in the Intermediate cup!