The season of missed opportunities continue, against what was a poor looking Rochford team Maidonians managed to squander another 2 points here.
Yes we can blame referee decisions (this was a humdigger) but we need to be able to beat these teams by taking the chances when they are on.
Onto the game, after the week prior where we heard that Rochford left the team due to the volatility of some of their players (goalkeeper) we thought this may be a feisty affair and that was confirmed when Tony was hacked in the first 10 minutes.
We were 1-0 down within the first 20 minutes against run of play so thought this would be one of those days. It was obvious at half time however that Rochford were running out of legs so an “inspired” substitution by Chris in the second half saw him bring himself on and within minutes a ball somehow left by Belly (his claim that he left it deliberately being somewhat dubious) fell to Chris who slotted it away deftly. 1-1 game on. Next opportunity saw the ball fall to Tony 3 yards out when the defender missed the ball, Tony’s swipe sent the ball over the net and think it is still travelling, this resulted in the keeper running out to Tony to let him now what he thought of his ability in subtle tones.
5 minutes later Tony was put through and nicely slotted the ball past the keeper and we are strolling at 2-1. I think that made Tony’s 11th goal this season (check stats). Tony not being a shy lad on the football pitch decided to include the Rochford goalkeeper in his celebrations. Surely victory was ours, and more so when 5 minutes later new boy Danny (3rd new Danny this season – all midfielders) from the right beat the goalkeeper in what was a legitimate goal. Not so according to the opposition goalkeeper who berated his linesman that Chris was standing in an off side position on the opposite post who then waved his flag (2 mins after the goal) and amazingly the ref disallowed it.
The game had a sense of inevitability about it when with 5 mins to go instead of just clearing the ball we decided to be subtle in defence and a mistimed pass allowed the Rochford forward in to square up. Which was how it finished. Another frustrating afternoon which leaves us languishing in the bottom 4. (well at least we weren’t 3 up)
