Knobs 2 Sandridge Rovers 4

This won’t take long.

On a beautiful morning, we played quite poorly on a bobbly picture.  There was a mixture of old and new faces and this may have contributed to what was a very disjointed performance.  They didn’t play that well but we probably deserved to lose in front of a record home crowd.  There was at least 16 there at one point and that doesn’t include the tennis players.

In the first half nothing happened.  Honestly…nothing happened.  We had no shots and they had one.  Maybe you could say that defences were on top.

In the second half, within a few minutes of the restart, Craig gave away a penalty.  Tony saw the red mist descend apparently but it was too late to do anything about it.  Brendan Wren’s first touch as the new goalkeeper was picking it out from the back of the net.  They then scored a second about 10 minutes later and it looked like the start of a proper collapse but unlike the mighty Spurs we battled on.  Gavin turned a defender on the half way line and threaded a lovely ball through the defence to Dave, who was rudely barged out of the way and so a clear penalty.  Bully stepped up and rolled it into the net.  Unfortunately though they went on to score two more.  Brendan wasn’t to blame I don’t think.  In fact at one stage, I’m sure he made quite a good stop when someone tried to go round him.  In the last minute, Gavin weaved some magic in the area to get to the by-line and cut back to Bully, who stroked home to score a second.  The only other moments of note were two strong runs and misplaced shots by Craig and Steve.  To be honest, we looked unlikely to score all match.  We never really turned their defenders, we never ran at their defenders and when we passed, it just bobbled up in the air and there wasn’t much that could be done.

So that was it.  The final score was 4-2 to them and it was well deserved.  We’ve got a few injury concerns at the moment.  Joel came off with a calf issue today and Dave with a groin injury.  This is where we need to see the strength in depth of our squad.  Have we actually got anyone coming back from injury???

Well played everyone.  As long as we all enjoyed it, that’s what counts.  I thought Nick and Martyn had a very strong first half.  Nick really pressurised their players but as he pointed out at one point during the first half, we didn’t do it as a team.  I think we need to be a little bit more compact at times.  But that’s just me.  It will be interesting to see what Dave thinks in the post-match interview.  Who can he trust to do a job in the team?  Who’s got the necessary desire to represent the KNOBS?

Team (as started): Gavin, Craig, Martyn, Tony, Dan, Gerry, Bully, Chris Cox, Joel, Nick and Dave. Subs – Steve and Brendan Wren