BOURNEMOUTH PREMIER DIVISION
SATURDAY 21ST FEBRUARY 2009
SWAY 2 VERWOOD TOWN 1

Team

1. Gary Martin
2. Kris Rix
3. Conor Moore
4. Graham Cole
5. Pete Eyre
6. Paul Stephens
7. Sean Morrison
8. Ben Britnall
9. Karl Foster
10. Carl Smalley
11. Josh Goncalves

Report

Seven changes from the team the week before, plus having to put Gary Martin in goal all forced upon us either by injury, illness or work commitments. With these wholesale changes we cannot get any sort of consistency in formations and hence, style of play. Three players cried off within 24 hours of kick off all of whom were ill. This left us with just the bare minimum of players, just what you want when visiting the current champions!

If there is one huge plus mark for this team this season, it is their commitment during the 90 minutes of play. We had a game plan, albeit negative with a hope that we could protect Gary in numbers and hope that with our youthful speed we could catch them on the break.

The game started fairly evenly and despite a huge height advantage to Sway, we were winning all the challenges and looked comfortable, restricting them in the first 20 minutes to no attempts on goal. Midway through the first half, having already shown some good passing moves, we strung together some good play resulting in a delicate through ball from Paul Stephens which lone striker Karl Foster latched onto and he calmly lobbed the keeper from 25 yards to put us one up.

Sway fought back but we held firm with young Conor at left back having a strong game, Kris also 17 years old making his debut was breaking out of defence well and he went on to have a storming game, but Coley and Pete Eyre in the centre of defence were immense. By far the best two players on the park.

But there was little we could do about the equaliser 10 minutes before half time, which resulted from a corner. The ball was headed back across goal, Gary unfortunately missed his punch and the ball was scrambled in at the far post. Probably a fair scoreline at half time.

2nd half saw us more under the cosh, but we stood solid although when breached from long range shots, Gary made a couple of excellent saves. We also defended corners well and when the opportunity arose we broke well and with purpose. With 15 minutes to go, one such break saw Ben Britnall hit the bar with a shot that surprised everyone and we were found guilty of not following it up. We then paid the ultimate price, by backing off from one of their midfielders allowing him to shoot from just outside the box and the ball screamed into the corner of our net. We continued to fight to the end, but yet again failed by the odd goal.

Report submitted by Neville Munson