A much changed side from our previous two encounters with Olympic Saltdean, this time they had a full side and a sub on the bench. It didn’t take long for us to open the score; in the 7th minute Dan Buchanan played a ball through to Ben Wheatland who put the ball in the back of the net. A minute later and Fletch harried one of their players, stole the ball off him before running a few yards and releasing Chief who blasted the ball beyond the keeper. It looked as if we were going to carry on where we left of in the last game against them, in the 15th minute Jac had a good chance to increase the lead but somehow put the ball wide, like wise Ben blasted the ball over the cross bar in the 34th minute when perhaps it would have been easier to tap it in. Their keeper seemed to fumble everything, clearly this was noticed by their skipper who traded places with him in goal, and pulled off some good saves to keep the score down. Jac redeemed himself in the 41 minute by scoring after some good team work with last weeks earo, H, just back from his jaunt in New York. 0-3 the score at half time.
Joe Thomas replaced Fletch at half time, and Adam was complaining to Dick that we got the tactics wrong, kicking into the sun in the second half, the sun was lower in the sky and in the defenders eyes. BBOB weren’t playing their best football, as always we seem to drop our standards when up against a poor side. Chief had a good chance in the 57 minute to make it 0-4 but headed the ball over the goal, in the 60 minute we were awarded a free kick just inside the Saltdean half on the right hand side, H took the resulting free kick which narrowly missed the top L/H corner of the Saltdean goal, a shoot or a misdirected kick, H will tell you it was a shot. 4 minutes later and Dan tapped in a pass from Jac to make it 0-4. The BBOB defence handled the Saltdean attacks well, Adam winning and Josh winning most of the aerial attacks, by now the sun had gone down behind the hill.In the 73 minute we were awarded a penalty, Chief placed the ball on the spot and took a good penalty to make it 0-5.
Some of the player’s legs were beginning to tire and H looked as if he was suffering from jet lag, not from his speed on the pitch but from the flight. Steve Maskell was looking to bring on younger, fresher legs; Keith who had been playing at right back this week came off to be replaced by Dick, what happened to Steve’s tactics, as Keith said it not often the average age of the team goes up when he is substituted. Dick came on to cheers from the crowd, or were they jeers! Dick had only just got on the pitch when Adam was shouting at him again, this time to win a ball, Dick found himself chasing “Orange boots” down the right wing before the ball was cleared for a throw-in. H found himself going in the lady referees little black book, she did ask for his telephone number just his name, for a foul on their number “8”, they had been having their own little battle all afternoon. Shortly afterwards the number “8” was in the book for a foul, he didn’t learn and the referee was about to show him a second yellow for another foul when he swore at her and was given a straight red. BBOB played out the game with the final score at 0-5 and still unbeaten in the league, just one point behind leaders Royal Hove with two games in hand.
An important semi-final next week against Royal Hove, we’ve already beaten them once, let’s raise our game and make sure we get through to that final
Match report by Dick
