Hempnall FC

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After the impressive and well deserved victory last weekend against Harleston, the next fixture we faced was a match against another one of the promotion favourites, Thetford Rovers.

Being a reserve team we have become quite acustomed to a ever changing squad, we still have yet to field the same 11 players for 2 consecutive games and I doubt we will in our remaining 13 fixtures. This is just the nature of the reserve football. 

We were without Alistair Dick, Dean Mortimer, Darren Fowles and James Barnes, all unavailble. We also had the unfortunate late call off of Mark 'Crouchy' Goddard who fell ill with a bout of altitude sickness, after standing up too quick!

We had returning to duty, Lee 'Wedding Crasher' Emmett,  Kevy 'Herbal' Oakley and Jay 'Yakubu' McClusky. Also we had available 2 of Hempnall young prospects Arthur' The Mod 'Sauverin and Tommy '9 lives' Leeder.

The game began at a frantic pace with Theford knocking the ball left to right looking for opportunities to break the solid formation. For the first 25 mins of the games we managed to keep this attacking side at bay. It wasn't until Emmett power slammed their number 9 to the ground which caught the refs eye and he granted Theford a Penalty.

A few seconds after a ref points to the spot,  is a time when most teams would be expecting to concede, but not us.....!!! With one the best young goal keepers in the Anglian Combination in goal,  we know that a goal is no certainty.

As the Thetford Midfielder placed the ball on the spot, Danny 'Disco'  Quantrill looked as confident as ever. When the ball was struck Danny launched into a 'Tom Daley esq' dive to his left and pulled off a great save only for the parry to fall directly back to their striker, who knocked the ball in the net. A lapse in the heart of defence allowed Thetford to score shortly after, so we went into the break 2-0 down.

We were reasonably positive about the second half, knowing that if we could grab the first goal the we would probably go on to get something from the game. Unfortunately Thetford came out and scored 2 high quality goals in the first 15 mins putting the game out of reach. At 4-0 down we pushed men on and conceded 2 more late goals.

There were solid performances from virtually the whole team, including 'The 3 Musketeers', David Story, Paul Kemp and Matty Nixon, but it was a mixture of individual errors and quality play by the opposition which took the game away from us. 
Without doubt the standout Hempnall player on the day, was Danny (renamed) 'the feline' Quantrill who couldn't have done anything more to keep Thetford at bay, with 3 or 4 high quality saves.

It was a game which we weren't expected to win, but on another day and and with a bit more discipline the result could have been very different.

MOM: Danny Quantrill
Score: Thetford 6 Hempnall 0