Saturday 20th February 2010 - Otterbourne 2 Paulsgrove 1

Team: Flood, Kerr A, Willson, Cole, JJ, Gleeson, Davies, Smyth, Kerr T, Milne, Taylor, Jakes, Calder, Judd, Gallant.

Knighter had a groin problem so moved the team around with Kev moving into the middle and Kerr dropping into right back with Gareth moving wide.

We started slowly and only some brave goalkeeping by Jamie kept us in it. First he got down well to a Paulsgrove shot, and then he came out at the feet of their striker who had broken through the Otters defence.

After that he pulled a shot out of the air and smothered a good blast from another Paulsgrove player. Basically our midfield could not get hold of the ball and were chasing shadows for the first twenty minutes.

Eventually we started to exert some control and a good ball out to Liam from Kev opened up the Paulsgrove defence, Liam managed to skin one player and put a decent cross into the box, it evaded Aaron but Tom at the back door managed to lash the ball into the net a la Van Baston v England.

Milner was put away by Matt and beat the keeper but was forced wide and the defender managed to get back to stop Aaron shooting into the empty net and forcing his cross out for a corner.

We were now on top and a great kick from Jamie was flicked on via Liam and in the melee that followed JJ poked the ball past the keeper and into the onion bag. It was all Otterbourne and Aaron was bought down in the box by a Paulsgrove defender. Up stepped Tom who smacked the penalty against the bar and Paulsgrove cleared and the referee blew for half time.

Half time talk was about more commitment as to be honest Paulsgrove were the better side.
We managed to hold onto the lead for the next fifteen minutes before Aaron got away on the left and as the keeper came out all he had to do was pull it back for the un-marked Gareth but decided to go for a curled shot which he ballooned wide much to the frustration of the manager!

Paulsgrove started to get their game together and open us up with a cute angled ball which their forward controlled on his chest before lobbing over Jamie.

This heralded more pressure from Paulsgrove and Jamie again managed to get down to a shot that was destined for the bottom right corner and although we huffed and puffed we could not find the correct final ball to kill Paulsgrove off and hung on to win ugly in the end.