Hempnall FC

Hempnall faced top of the table Heacham with a side again missing several players, unavailable for various reasons, and with four enforced changes and only 11 regulars, plus the injured Billy Kelly and the joint manager on the bench, Hempnall were to face easily the best team in the league who should be playing several levels higher.

Heacham is clearly a club on the up and included a number of players who have played at a higher level, and given that Heacham have scored four or more goals on 10 occasions, including a 1-8 win at Yarmouth the previous week, we knew it was going to be, at best, tough.

Hempnall started with three centre backs and two wing backs, a midfield quartet and Jutty up top.

The wind was fierce, at an angle just favouring the opposition in the first half, but Heacham were finding it difficult to breach a strong defence, and when they did, they found Hempnall keeper Davis again at his best.

Heacham always looked the stronger team, but Hempnall were holding them really well, playing decent football whilst not really being able to regularly breach the Heacham defence, with the opposition’s centre half looking particularly dominant. That said, Melton had a shot which didn’t trouble the keeper and Jutty was his usual competitive self but couldn’t really fashion himself any real chances.

Heacham finally managed to score through a very unfortunate penalty conceded with an accidental hand ball in the box, the referee deemed it sufficient to award a penalty and Davis was unable to reach the ball.

In all fairness, Hempall were giving almost as good as they were getting, just not able to finish off any moves.

We went into the interval 0-1 down.

The second half was much like the first, with Hempnall generally able to withstand the Heacham barrage, themselves going close through Jutty who couldn’t quite convert.

For 70 minutes, we saw Hempnall perform outstandingly well, but conceding three goals in ten minutes, which made the scoreline rather flattering to Heacham, though Hempnall ended well, so we can be pleased with the overall level of performance.

Despite conceding 4 goals (none of which he could do anything about), my MOM is again Taylor Davis.