Otterbourne Football Club First Team Match Reports

Saturday 30th January 2010 - Sporting BW 3 Otterbourne 4

Team: Flood, Allen, Willson, Kelly, JJ, Knight, Beasley, Cole, Kerr T, Milne, Davies, Gleeson, Smyth.

Paul Allen was the only change to the team that played last weekend.

Thought I would praise everyone for the effort and commitment shown in the Stoneham game and how we should take that form into this match!

Well after ten minutes of relentless pressure on the Sporting goal, they humped a hopeful ball down the middle to their lone striker who surprisingly only had to beat one defender and was on route to the goal, the said defender Marc couldn’t get back in front of him played the professional foul and brought the player down just outside the box. Where the rest of the defence were who knows? Marc was sent off and the resulting free kick was blazed over.

Tom moved back to centre half leaving Aaron up front on his own. We were at sixes and sevens for the next twenty minutes with no one being capable of stringing two passes together!

Eventually as the half was coming to an end, we started passing again and a great ball down the middle from Knighter over their defence allowed Aaron to out sprint everyone into the box and smash it past the keeper to put us one up. Referee blowing the whistle for half time straight after the goal.

I asked for the team to relax, play our football and go on and win the game one nil.

Well what a second half as we started to play the better football and went ahead when Aaron was clattered in the box, Tom stepped up and buried the penalty.

I brought Kev on for Beaser and Matt for Knighter but five minutes latter the charitable Otters defence gave Sporting a chance which they duly took. Thankfully other parts of the team were function brilliantly and we should have gone three up when Matt had an over head kick parried by the keeper, ball being fed back out to Liam whose cross was headed over the keeper by Matt but the defender on the line managed to clear it.

Matt then won a challenge in the centre of the park passed to Liam who was having a stormer, he looped a ball straight to Aaron who was between two defenders again he out paced them and smacked the ball past the advancing keeper.

Sporting weren’t done and again some bizarre defending allowed them to get a second goal.

Liam had a chance to get a fourth when Aaron replayed a similar pass to Liam who out ran the defenders but could quite find the finishing touch to beat the advancing keeper the ball then cannoned around their box but no one from Otters could stab it home.

Liam was not to be denied and some good work down the right all Aaron to wriggle free and he pulled the ball back for Liam to smash home from twelve yards. Game over? Not quite we again managed to let them get a fluky third when Jamie pulled of a great save but the ball bounced back out to one of the Sporting players who managed to scuff the ball home.

I felt considering we were playing with ten men for three quarters of the game the effort shown by everyone was back to how the team functioned three years ago when we were at the top of the league. Sporting were by no means a poor side and will cause others problems.