Danbury had beaten St Andrews the week before (who won the league last season) and so it was a big game for us to make our intentions for this league known. I set us out with a 4-5-1 as i remember that the last time we played them, they always seemed to have more of the ball in midfield and thus kept chipping away at us until a stupid freekick in injury time won them the game.
The formation seemed to suit us well in the circumstances and you guys were well up for it and we raced into a 3-0 lead which was less than we deserved as to be fair, 5-0 was probably the minimum correct score at halftime we should have had.
Our goals came from Collins, Hemmings and an unknown entity (memory loss). Their keeper made a number of saves and we missed a number of chances but you had played so well you gave me big problems at half time with the 2 subs we had. I had promised everyone a half but had to change that to coming on 10-15 mins in the second half.
We had run a bit out of steam and seemed to have lost a bit of fluidity in the 2nd half plus im sure they were given a rocket by their manager and were geed up remembering the comeback against us last season. We gifted them a sloppy goal, then another and quite a cheap equaliser too. They then predictively had a few chances before we were denied at the last.
Steve H and Collins worked brilliantly together and created them havoc, so much so that when i subbed Hemmings, their manager came and said to me "great decision, thanks!".
I must apologise to Rob here for the 15 mins he got. I made the substitutions even though i had half a thought to keep the team the same until last 15-20 and see what happened. In no small way is there any blame or anything put towards either of the subs this game but after watching 10 mins or so of this it was clear that i had massively weakened one side of the side in terms of phyiscally challenging for the ball.
I thought about it for a few mins then decided that i had to "man up" and make the right decisions i felt like for the team at that point. Therefore i scape goated Rob who wasnt playing bad at all but changed it to how i felt was best in the circumstances with the game having turned against us and us needing to scrap.
I must say that as you lot have raised the bar so much over the last couple of seasons, i will be making what i think are the "right" decisions re subs in the key games from now onwards ie not guarenteeing people a certain amount of game, if i think i've got it wrong - changing again, etc. I still would like to guarentee everyone who turns up football though. For the bigger key games i will also be looking to take a squad of 15-16 tops as having so many subs breaks fluidity of the team.
