Our longest away trip of the season, our first game after Wraggy quit, Conner out injured and others unavailable meant we were down to a bare 11 for this game. The one bit of good news was the return of Kieran Whitworth for his first game after rejoining Manor.
We started well with a couple of attacks in the first few minutes, without really troubling the Bridgford keeper. Simon managed to get a boot in the face in the 2nd minute leaving him with a duck-egg on his forehead. On 4 minutes a poor goal kick was collected by Simon, he played the ball through for Kieran whose first shot was straight at the keeper. The ball came back to Kieran and he made no mistake with his 2nd effort, slotting it into the corner. Four minutes later the roles were reversed when Kieran headed Graney’s chip on to Simon. The first time volley struck the post.
For the 20 minutes we couldn’t get a grip of the game, Corie moved up into the centre of midfield with Foxy dropping back to the centre of defence, Bridgford were causing us many problems but we couldn’t extend our lead. Simon and Kieran showed touches of the old partnership.
Simon burst out of our half on 25 minutes with a superb run down the right wing and he won a corner out of nothing. He took the corner himself and it was cleared back to him. His next cross was met by a Dom power header which was inches over the bar. Three minutes later another corner from Simon, this time from the left found Dom again and this time it flicked off his boot into the bottom corner to make it 2-0. Two minutes later and a breakaway for Bridgford resulted in a shot from the edge of the box which beat Adam into the corner. This goal lifted the home side and Adam was called into action again on the stroke of half-time but from this save we launched a great counter attack, with Graney, Kieran and Simon working together superbly but unable to hit the target. A Bridgford defender felt the full force of a Corie Pridmore volley as he stooped to head the ball just a Corie swung his leg and made a huge connection with head not ball. He was still seeing stars at half-time.
The 2nd half saw more good attacking play from Manor and some stunning footwork from Kieran on 50 minutes. He reached a ball near the corner flag turned and cut inside running along the bye-line. He pulled the ball back to Sam Graney, who was flattened. Shouts for a penalty were ignored by the ref, who was wearing dark glasses. Enough said!
A cheeky chip shot from Kieran on 53 minutes was plucked out of the air with relative ease by the Bridgford goalie. It wasn’t all one way traffic as a ball over the top beat Foxy. The forward strode into the box and fired a shot that was beaten away brilliantly by Adam. We managed to increase our lead with 10 minutes to go. Corie sent a ball over the defence, Simon chased it down and shot from just inside the area. It was a weak shot but it went beneath the goalie.
Another head injury for Bridgford as a rocket of a clearance from Dom struck the player on the forehead. He looked completely out of it but said he was okay to carry on. A knee-on-knee sliding collision saw each side lose a player to injury with 4 minutes to go, Aiden had to go off leaving us to finish the game with 10 men. However, it was Manor who had the last say in the game, Dom sent a ball over the top and Graney got his head to it. He chased this header and as the ball dropped towards the keeper, Graney jumped, beating the keeper and his second header nestled in the net.
Final score was a 4-1 win for Manor. Dom, Graney and Kieran were the main contenders for Man of the Match but with a goal, 2 assists, an incredible amount of running and a great bump on his head, it went to Simon. Well played lads!
