After dispatching Roselands in the last round we were drawn against Eden Rangers, a win here would leave us with a relatively easy route to the final and a chance to win back the trophy we last held in 2001.
Being close to Christmas we had the luxury of picking from a nearly full squad, Adam Harrison was missing through injury and Gammon was attending a conference at the O2 arena about the effects of excess blood in your alcohol stream. Stepping up to replace them were the bulldozer himself 2Gun Willy and Pitchfork Pitchy.
The B&A dominated the early stages and played some excellent offensive football, Ferg going closest putting a far post header wide of an open goal (mug!!!) There was also some interesting refereeing, (over the 90 minutes with out doubt the most 1sided display of refereeing I have ever seen!) there should have been two penalties in the first 20minutes both in B&A’s favour and both for handball. The Rangers manger said himself they were definite pens, and in the pub afterwards even their own players knew they had been lucky. Seems strange to me that 22 players and 15 odd people on the side lines could see the infringement but the little man in black didn’t. Very strange?? I suppose there’s a reason these guys aren’t professionals!
The assistant wasn’t much better either, bless him. He was a lovely young lad and keen as mustard. He obviously wanted to be involved as he had his flag up every five seconds, one occasion in particular seemed very dubious, this was a shame as the Slug had burst through and smashed the ball home from 6 yards.
Eventually the pressure paid off, Mr Ed got hold of the ball deep in his own half and was about to punt it clear when he spotted Gozzy in space on just over the half way line. He picked him out with an inch perfect pass, Gozzy shrugged off the defender and ran through to slot home.
Unfortunately we didn’t push on from there. Eden Rangers started to see more of the ball and as we know from previous experience are more than capable of playing the ball round you for fun. Some sloppy defending let them back in and their front man scored from a tight angle low into the corner. Minutes later they sprung the offside trap and left the B&A back four with egg on their face and rolled the ball home. It could have been worse but for the agile Nice Guy. After a good Rangers move down the left Nice Guy pulled off a great one handed save from close. I won’t mention his attempted punch form the resulting corner. (Oooo ducky…)
It seemed harsh to be 2-1 down at the break after starting so well but there was no time to cry. It wasn’t long before we were back on level terms. Some great work down the left from Ferg, who was trying desperately to make up for his horrific miss. He fed the ball to Huffers who crossed in for Gozzy to smash it in to the onion bag. The crowd went wild. I think the ref was a bit disappointed though.
Yet again though we failed to build on our success and couldn’t get our noses back in front. Woggles and Slug were doing a fine job in closing down the Rangers boys and winning everything in the air and Gozzy was being his usual tireless self.
It wasn’t long before we were behind again. No one put a foot in and everyone watched as they ran through and poked the ball into the corner. The 4th wasn’t much better, to be fair the finish was right in the bottom right hand corner but the defending leading up to it was very school boy like. Will, Shaggy and Merv all came on and did good jobs but we could find a way through. The Eden Rangers keeper, their 3rd choice was also in fine form tipping over efforts from The Slug and Baggo. They contest was effectively over when Bayley was injured late on. He tried to play on but the pain was too much even for him. Gozzy dropped in to the midfield to cover and again did a supurb job. Again poor refereeing in the 2nd half didn’t help our cause but ultimately we let ourselves down in some important areas.
Good luck to Eden Rangers in the rest of the Competition and a merry Christmas to everyone.
