Swifty Posted September 18, 2012 Share Posted September 18, 2012 Difficult match, disappointing result, and a good test for Saturday's important Cup game. I missed the Rugby Town match but I'd reckon tonight was our biggest test since the opener. Tough, relentless opponents who played at a high tempo, battled for everything and gave our defence a busy evening. We certainly deserved to be level at half time, a well struck 12th minute opener for Burnham cancelled out by a superb Bitz cross and a bullet header fom Kofi in the 42nd. Whern Dan put us ahead I thought we'd kick on but, suddenly, Burnham took ascendancy and never lost grip. The most disappointing thing is we went behind again with 20 minutes left and seemed to lose our shape and self-belief. The early substituiton of Bairoh (is he okay?) seemed to disrupt us and we never really got a proper hold again. Burnham won a lot of headers and second balls and we were kept deep, too deep, for periods of the game. From Burnham's point of view, their only blot was the idiotic cameo of sub Keiron Knight (referred throughout by my mate as Keira Knightly) who got two bookings in stoppage time for kicking the ball out of the ground and a daft tackle. Talking of cards, I thought Russ's booking was soft and undeserved and feared the worst when he did a bit of a clatterer later and stayed on the pitch. Wasn't impressed at all with the 'lino' on the standing terrace side who let Burnham advance a good 10 to 15 yards up the pitch for throw-ins in the first half. It wasn't all all doom and gloom, but hopefully a few players were just keeping their powder dry for Saturday. Still, I'd rather we lost a five-goal thriller to a decent team than one-nil to a bunch of cloggers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevchenko Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 We played OK high tempo game but defended quite poorly and could have shipped a couple more in the second half... Does anyone have the winning raffle numbers please, I forgot to check mine at HT as anxious to get on the club house and see how Exeter were getting on! Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazarus Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 A fairly accurate summing up by Swifty on this occasion I would say. I too thought that when we took the lead to make it 2-1, that would be the catalyst for some of the excellent football we have played in recent matches but the loss of Bairoh and his pace was certainly a factor. Burnham deserved to win and on this performance looked like a team that will be hard to beat but it was disappointing that all three goals could have been prevented by better defending although most of us will take one defeat every nine matches. As to "refwatch" it was the same official who did our match at Dunstable two weeks ago, which is never a good idea. Would it be that difficult for the refereeing departments at the FA to get together instead of having two different "authorities" one appointing for FA competition matches and one for league games? For me his major decision or lack of it was not to award a penalty to us at two apiece which looked absolutely 100% at the time from the bench, seemingly a very clear and quite violent shove. The assistant didn't react either but, of course, we don't know the instructions he may have received beforehand. Perhaps from our part of the pitch we were all seeing things! It would certainly have changed the game if we had scored at that point and probably the result. Upon calm reflection this morning I really cannot see how he did not give it. Didn't get the chance to speak to him about it as I had abandoned the boardroom, given the time it took the three of them to appear. Horrendous expenses again last night - why we can't have more local officials for a local match, who knows. As to other incidents, the game was physical but never turbulent so maybe some credit to the officials for their overall control. We had two cautions, one for Russell, whose foul didn't look any worse than those that had gone before, and one for Dan Brown, which probably was merited. Both were for tackles and we have still to have a player cautioned for dissent this season which is good. Burnham only had the one player sent off at the death for two cautions. Their officials felt the first caution was harsh and one said that the whistle had not gone when the player kicked the ball away. I half agree in that I wonder if it would have been a caution in the opening period (even though I think the player knew what he was doing) but with us frantically chasing an equaliser, the ref probably felt he had to act. The second foul was daft, given that he'd just been cautioned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swifty Posted September 19, 2012 Author Share Posted September 19, 2012 Alan, does this mean you query all my other match summaries? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazarus Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 I should have said "a particularly accurate summing up"! i.e. even better than usual. Am I off the hook? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swifty Posted September 20, 2012 Author Share Posted September 20, 2012 Yeah, no problem! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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