The Hindringham game - Not our greatest performance of the campaign, but the points were all the more pleasing when other results came through, and saw it had taken us to the top, at least we can say we have been there once this season. With the unavailable list up to eight, Panayi, Hyett, Robinson, Barnes all injured Cawston, Shipley and Spurgeon on social activity, plus new signing Hunton having to work, it was some relief when Solly declared himself physically fit, although not match fit, to resume his place in the starting line up.
In some ways, it’s not surprising the performance did not live up to the previous week, what with the two sides knowing each other so well much of the fluency of the Brandon game had gone. Credit to Hindringham and Marcus, whose tactics contained us well after a promising opening 10 minutes.
It was apparent Frankie was not his normal self as he spluttered physically and was unusually quiet for him throughout the 1st half , so it was no surprise when he revealed he had a strain in his hamstring and took no part in the 2nd half.
Sparky Way entered the fray along side Rob and this would prove to be influential on the outcome of the game.
Hindringham, who also had unavailability problems, began to nudge ahead on points and looked the more likely side to score in the opening 20 minutes.When somewhat against the run of play we created a four man move of quality, with Sparky the main architect and Tom the executioner, finishing clinically to continue his rich vein of form in front of goal.
This should have seen us settle, but we continued to frustratingly do the incorrect thing in many quarters, to give Hindringham opportunities to push us to the wire, (not unusually), but we held on to secure three more very valuable points.
There were definitely lessons to be learned.
Off the pitch, two ‘7 day’ approaches have been made to boost the squad, watch this space !
It was really pleasing to see the new third team get underway with a very young team coming from behind twice to win 4 - 2, when their extra fitness began to tell, and I understand two goals came in the last 10 minutes. It is worth noting that many of these young boys have been training hard with the seniors and obviously it’s paying off .
It was also pleasing to See Dave Arnold able to get to a game. I hope this is a sign of things to come, people with his sort of commitment are hard to replace.
Unfortunately the Reserves couldn’t make it a hat-trick of wins as they went down 1 - 0 away at Martham, as they were hit hard by the unavailable. I know Paul was disappointed with the result but philosophical about the performance against a decent home side.