Ash Trees 1 Kingfishers 1

[Swifty]

One of those nights. After the blizzard of goals on Saturday, a freezing night and a luke-warm game.

 

For the second successive match, we had a player break down in the warm-up. This time it was Bairoh, replaced by Robbie Sitch, and a decision was made to go with a back three. Unfortunately we were unsettled by an early injury to Antonio's nose which saw us playing a man down for nearly ten minutes (By the way, hope Bairoh and Pietro recover quickly, though I heard P's injury might rule him out for a few games).

 

We had the better of the first half against an admittedly livelier than expected Thatcham team, we probably should have gone ahead when Kofi hit a reflex shot against the bar, and we eventually took the lead with a 43rd minute thunderbolt by Joe, our best player on the night.

 

Any chance of consolidating went out the window when Thatcham's half time sub Denilson Vincente curled a beauty in, also from the edge of the box, in the 47th. After that, Thatcham's tails were up, they could and maybe should have scored two or three more but for some terrible finishing and a couple of great saves by Macca and, although we hit the bar and sub Bitz brought out an incredible save from visiting custodian Ashley West, a point was the most we deserved. The final ball just wasn't there, Thatcham's midfield smothered us for large parts of the second half, and both defences dug in to keep the score down.

 

Nearly quarter to eleven and my feet are still like icebergs, even having worn two pairs of socks. By the way, why didn't the teams come out until kick-off time? We didn't start the game until 7.50 on probably the coldest April night round here since records began! Admittedly it was freezing, but a shame that our cup finalists only played in front of 55 (including officials), and Thatcham probably brought 15 fans with them.