Maidenhead 1 Billericay 0

[jl]

Not for the first time in recent weeks we have missed an opportunity to haul ourselves out of the bottom four although on this occasion i felt that we gave a decent account of ourselves and deserved to get something out of the game.

A healthy away contingent was greeted with the sight of Jewson s entire stock of sand having been dumped on the pitch and the team news which was largely expected except that steve jones started ahead of michael black.

i thought we were far superior in the first half but could not make our possession count, jones and tomlinson missing our two best chances.

maidenhead came out of the blocks quickly in the second half and sadly made their spell of possession count with non league nomad rob haworth sweeping in what proved to be the winner. during this twenty minute spell weaver also made a couple of outstanding saves to keep us in the match.

we slowly got back into it but their keeper was resolute and commanded his area well towards the end with a lot of high balls coming in.

the arrival of baukham ahead of stowe continues to mystify, lets just hope its some squad rotation ahead of tuesday!!!

 

weaver

aziz sappleton trott henty

jones (stowe 88 minutes [****!!****] pointless) hunter (baukham) davidson (black) dormer

tomlinson opara

 

snu: reddington, brown.

 

thankfully everyone else (bar st albans) lost so no major effect on the table. a return to winning ways with another testing away trip on tuesday is the order of the day.

 

[Simon BTFC]

Same problem we've had for large chunks of the season - other than Danny Hockton we don't have anybody who looks like scoring goals consistently. The combined total, in all competitions, for yesterdays squad is 15 Billericay goals this season.

 

As JL says we played well first half but 2nd half "up the slope" I don't think we had a shot on target. Don't think we played badly, on a pitch that was as bad as any I've seen this season (bore more than a passing resemblence to Southend beach - loads of sand and mud!)

[GazzaBTFC]

I thought we did enough to win the game and as jl said our chances were squandered. The pitch was disgusting with all the sand on it and lent itself to beach vollyball than football, as the amount of hand balls committed by Maindenhead testified to that.

 

I know that it isn't "pollitically" correct to complain about the ref and his "little buddies on the line" (subsitute "buddies" with another "b" word) when we lose and that our fate is in our own hands but they were amoungst the worst officials of the season, missing fouls (especially by their No. 7 - Dormer must be nursing loads bruises this morning), giving decisions the wrong way and offsides whenever a Maidenhead arm went up.

 

So put all that together, a pitch that frankly Canvey would be embarased to own, the officials, squandered chances, the state of the ground in general, the oppresive atmosphere in the clubhouse afterwards (I swear I saw steam coming out of Ryans ears at one point in an effort to keep his cool), put this down as a Saturday to forget. Oh the burger and chips was quality...but that doesn't really say a lot.

 

All in all, the most unfriendliest club that I have been to this season.

 

Oh and and I forget. Some of us complain about our programme...Has anyone read the Maidenhead one? Read it and and then compare...From the first line of the welcome page ("good evening to one and all"), to the last page, errors abound...Must've been put together by those two "dopeheads" that were standing outside the clubhouse when we left.

[BTFC Martin]

Quote:

GazzaBTFC said:

I know that it isn't "pollitically" correct to complain about the ref and his "little buddies on the line" (subsitute "buddies" with another "b" word) when we lose and that our fate is in our own hands but they were amoungst the worst officials of the season, missing fouls (especially by their No. 7 - Dormer must be nursing loads bruises this morning), giving decisions the wrong way and offsides whenever a Maidenhead arm went up.

Unfortunately the ref wasn't that bad, he got most of the main decisions right, and as for the offsides, if you stand down the side of the pitch you would of seen than most of them were correct. We delayed playing through balls which meant our forwards kept going offside, everytime lumped a free kick into the area one of our players would step into an offside position, KK was about 5 yards offside when he scored and before anyone says it deflected off a defender, in this months 4-4-2 mag they have a bit about the offside rule on page 20 and it says that a player is offside if the ball rebounds off an opponent having been in an offside position.

As for the pitch, its sandy, so what, it didn't affect us.

The main reason we lost because we didn't take our chances in the first half.

[Simon BTFC]

Don't agree with you regarding the pitch Martin - our best performances and results have come when we've been able to knock the ball about on the deck - as soon as it goes aerial we're struggling. Yesterday the dire pitch made it impossible to pass with any confidence as the ball kept getting stuck in the ruts. Hopefully the surface at Kettering will be better....

 

The ref was poor though with the exception of the penalty shout, I don't think any of his decisions had any influence on the result.

 

Time for some positives <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

 

1) Weaver - another good game. The one handed save he pulled off 2nd was a contender for save of the season in my book...

2) Thought we defended pretty well for the first hour. Once Davidson and Hunter had gone off though, we got over-run in the centre of the park and under pressure.

3) Dormer - another good game in centre mid.

 

One criticism - given that we're in the "8 cup-finals" stage of the season, why didn't we gamble more when chasing the game? We might as well lose 2 or 3 nil as 1. I think we should have thrown caution to the wind and gone 3 at the back with 3 up front. Also, in a similar vein, why not send Weaver up for corners? He's the biggest bloke in the team and I reckon could cause a few problems in the air. As an example we had a corner late on yesterday, and left both full backs and keeper in our half. We might as well throw them into the box imho!

[Andy Walsh]

A shame not to get any points, we need to make sure we pick up something at Kettering as we then have 3 very tough games in Carshalton, Bognor and Canvey.

 

www.billericaytownfc.20m.com

[Paul S]

a very disappointing result yesterday considering we had a very good chance to haul ourselves out of trouble with other results going our way.

 

with regards to the pitch - it was an awful pitch not conducive to passing football BUT both teams had to play on it, maidenhead managed to deal with it better.

 

i thought the referee had a decent game - made a few mistakes, but what everyone has to remember is that we are watching ryman league standard players reffed by ryman league standard referees - players make a huge amount of mistakes at this level - so why are supporters unable to accept referees also make mistakes. its a shame that certain fans seem to spend half their time slating the referee rather than supporting the team.

[Simon BTFC]

Quote:

Paul S said:
its a shame that certain fans seem to spend half their time slating the referee rather than supporting the team.

Fair point. Have to say that for a few of us frustration over a hugely disappointing season is starting to boil over and is being taken out on the ref... Bring on Kettering!!

[Ryan.c]

Probably one of the worst pitches I've seen for many a year. If I had known that there was going to be that amount of sand on the pitch then I would have turned up with me deckchair and candy floss stall. They didn't even bother to roll it either. The words Tin and Pot spring to mind.

[Simon BTFC]

Went past it today on the train - looks even worse from on high!