FA Trophy - Hednesford Town 3 Hornchurch 1

[Urchins]

A great day out but sadly not a great performance.

 

All credit to Hednesford Town who deserved their victory.

 

Well done to the players and management for getting as far as they did and making history (again) for Hornchurch Football Club.

 

Full(er) report to follow....

 

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[Red 'N' White Army]

Hesnesford may have been the better side tonight but they did not want that game played Saturday and did nothing to the pitch to prepare for it. It suited them to play tonight and their tactics paid off. Not saying that alone made the boys play badly, they have had an off day - shame it was tonight.

[urchinboys]

Scandalous...there were more games off tonight than on Saturday!!

Was the pitch playable? and why wasn't it on Saturday?

[Red 'N' White Army]

Like you say, there were more games off tonight than Saturday. There was one part of the pitch behind the goal that gets little sun and was rozen Saturday. Yet they didn't cover this area in preparation!?!? Wouldn't have thought the pitch would've been much better tonight.

 

Pitch was also very bobbly Saturday, was levelled out for tonight. Convenient.

 

Bitter - not me!

They intended to kick lumps out of our lot and they did just that. Stuck 3 past us too... argh!

[Urchins]

Well the dream has come to an end. And it was a tad disappointing, but perhaps our expectations have been raised rather high after beating two Conference sides on the way to this stage.

 

The signs were there that this was not going to be our day, a badly skewed pass from an opponent somehow finding his own player on more than one occasion, a boot curled round from behind to take the ball away from us or 50-50 tackles just not quite bouncing our way. But I'm not suggesting that Hednesford were lucky, they fought for their victory and fully deserved it.

 

Like in the last round we fell behind to an early goal, this time after 4 minutes through a Mark Danks penalty after being brought down by Ollie Adedeji. Our first real effort came on 22 minutes when Lee Matthews forced a good save from Ryan Young but the equaliser we so desperately needed before half time came on 39 minutes and it came from a Hednesford corner. Danny Gay claimed the ball and punted it upfield where Vinnie John took advantage of a poor defensive header to lob the ball over Young for Brayley to head into an empty net. This kicked us into life and for the remainder of the half we played the kind of classy football we know we're capable of.

 

Unfortunately we couldn't continue this into the second half. We went back to looking nervous in defence and Hednesford missed a good chance in the 52nd minute after a mad scramble after Gay spilled a ball into the box. Mark Graham clipped the crossbar 10 minutes later and Gay made a good save from Steve Evans straight after. Gay tipped over a header from Chris Brindley on 66 minutes but from the ensuing corner we allowed Brindley another chance to hit the target and he did so with a powerful header to put Hednesford back in front. George Borg brought on John Keeling for Adam Locke and Andy Douglas for Danny Kerrigan but failed to ignite us sufficiently like it had done against Burton. John Martin forced another good save from Young with 15 minutes left but a few minutes later Hednesford landed the sucker punch when a free kick into the penalty area was headed onto the post and Danny McGhee tidied up with our defence struggling to recover. Hednesford had looked fairly comfortable at the back all game so looked unlikely to lose their lead in the time remaining. Right at the end Young was once again brought into action tipping over from an Andy Douglas long range shot.

 

Line-up:- Gay, Gooding, Kerrigan (Douglas 75), Adedeji, Matthews, Locke (Keeling 68), Graham, J Martin, John, Brayley, McGowan. Subs not used:- Southon, Rowland, McCartney (GK)

 

[Guest]

It pains me to say it, but probably the better team on the night did win. Who knows what the outcome would have been had it been played on Saturday, but that's not really the issue. The plain cold fact is that we will not be going to Villa Park come May. However, the Urchins did make the Quarter Finals which is no small achievement when you look at the teams in the competition and along the way we have shown the football world that we can cut it with the Conference clubs. One below par performance does not diminish the fact that George Borg has put together a fantastic team.

On the plus side, Hednesford had the best burgers of any club I've been to and I was very impressed with their ground. (If only the pitch on Saturday could have been as good as the stands).

 

[Billericay Blue]

 

An all Essex Ryman final is what I wanted.

 

It would have been a real boost to all the clubs in this area.

 

 

Unlucky Hornchurch.

Now lets hope Canvey win it for Essex.

 

[Merv]

Hard luck lads/lasses. I too was looking to an all-Essex final but, sadly, it is not to be.

 

Congratulations for getting this far. Now you can concentrate on the league!

[EMH O30crew]

cheers merv