Otterbourne Football Club First Team Match Reports

Saturday 6th February 2010 - Headley 2 Otterbourne 2

Team: Flood, Taylor, Willson, Kelly, JJ, Knight, Smyth, Cole, Kerr T, Milne, Davies, Flemming, Timms, Elmasri.

It’s a long drive out to Headley and we knew it was going to be a tough game as they are always pretty good on their own patch.

We started like a train with Gareth and Matt combining well on the right making big in-roads to the Headley defence. Within six minutes Coley played the ball through for Aaron whose shot smacked the bar and went over. Just as I was thinking we are playing really well Headley took the lead!

Headley managed to force a corner on the left which there player delivered right onto the bar it rebounded straight to a Headley player who bundled it over the line.

Worse was to come, Headley then managed to work an opening on the right and a great cross found the striker un-marked at the far post to have an easy header straight past the stranded Jamie.

They say footballs a funny old game well I don’t think Headley got out their half after this as we played some good flowing football. Ball was knocked up to Tom’s feet and he swiveled and hit a shot which again hit the woodwork and went out! Knighter made a run from the half way line beat three players before the Headley defender un-ceremonially hacked him down outside the box. The resulting free kick blazed over.

Coley did the same running at them and again was fouled again which we blazed wide from the kick.

Craig then did well out wide with Liam and drove a low hard cross into the box which they scrambled to clear. Finally we won another free kick which was wasted something to work on in training.

Normally would have blown my stack at half time being two down but because we had played so much good football I didn’t, but asked for us to be a bit more ruthless in front of goal as I felt we could still win it.

Again we started well and were putting Headley under a lot of pressure which resulted in their centre half handling a cross into the box from Liam, up stepped Kelly to blast the spot kick past the keeper who had anticipated well but couldn’t get a hand to it.

It was all Otterbourne and more hassle resulted in a cross from Knighter being crashed against the bar from Liam could we get the equalizer a play deserved?

I replaced Craig and Tom to get fresh legs on the pitch, Knighter moving up front with Tom Flemming and Russ Timms making their debuts. We were still going for it and Aaron got round the back of their defence only to fall over as he was about to pull the ball back for Knighter.

Then with all the momentum of going forward Gareth had a heart in the mouth moment as he gave the ball away on the right with everyone forward their player raced towards the box but instead of shooting he squared it to the startled Headley player who snatched his chance and shot wide. With only a few minutes to go we forced a corner which Headley cleared but the ball got pushed back up the line by Russ and Matt crossed for JJ to loop a header over the keeper and into the onion bag - phew!

With little time left we tried to get the winner but it wasn’t to be, a hard fought draw was probably what I would have taken before the game but in reality we were so dominant we should have won.