Despite only playing a 70 minute match on a tragic surface, Boots Wednesday extended their unbeaten run to 3 games with a solid performance against Trent Vale, dominating from start to finish as the whole team showed good communication and consistency. From the very beginning it was evident that the Vale defence were lacking pace and composure, and Patto played a weighted ball through the middle that saw Bally felled just outside the area. Rowan smashed the resulting free kick against the bar, causing further panic in their defence. The breakthrough didn’t take long to come as Crozier’s long throw from the left evaded everyone in the box and allowed Patto a low shot at goal from the edge of the area; the keeper struggled to hold the bobbling ball, and Bally pounced to smash the loose ball into the top bin. Further chances fell to Boots as Patto missed a volleyed effort (from a delicious Rowan cross-field ball) by centimetres, while Bally was put through once again but saw his shot smothered by the keeper. Simon also tried his luck from long range while Stand-In Captain Brett used every available free-kick to pepper the Vale defence with dangerous balls. Boots won and retained possession effectively throughout the half as Sweetman and Simon held the midfield well with Patto dropping back to help them out (and drag defenders with him), while Rowan and Kieran were always looking for the ball down the wings from the untested Phil’s long kicks.
With the sun and wind to their advantage Vale did finally make Phil work (on occasion) in the second half. He did well to block a one-on-one and also held on to a low shot, while the most dangerous moment of the half came when he picked up Brett’s backpass (although Toobs clearly took a shove in the back, as his pass was far too accurate to be deliberate!) For the rest of the game the Boots defence coped easily with the Vale threat as Hawry-lick, Brett and Fletch read the game extremely well and cleared everything competently, and Crozier (with the help of Kieran) nullified the threat from their only good player down their right. Boots added a second when Bally easily rose to Crozier’s corner and headed beyond the flailing keeper, while Sweetman saw a long range effort go wide (I won’t say how far!) and Griffin (who replaced Bally, who’d run his socks off) was close to heading in his first Boots goal from Rowan’s cross. As Vale tired, Man of the Match Rowan continued to bumble around at pace in his own inimitable way to find the space and goal-scoring opportunities down the right but was denied on more than one occasion by the sprawling keeper, while Spence (who came on for Simon) and the rest of midfield and defence kept their composure to regularly find the right passes, and it was only in the final third that tired legs appeared to lose momentum!
I’ll only briefly mention the ref as he didn’t really affect the outcome (and his decisions probably evened out between the teams), but he had a shocker!
