Hempnall FC

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The highs and lows of being involved with a Football club went to some extremes yesterday.

After leaving Thetford with a narrow frustrating 1-0 defeat, travelling back through the snow and ice, the temptation was to put the feet up and sit by the TV. Luckily, one look at ‘Wagner’ got my ‘bottom in gear’, the Huskies were reined up and I ventured into the Arctic conditions. (Just thinking about it has anyone seen the dogs, they were missing when I ventured home at 3.30 am!!)

Am I am glad I did venture out though! As I would have not only missed a fantastic night driven by an excellent band in the shape of 'Scratch the Cat', but also would not have had my spirits lifted in seeing the tremendous work of our new Fundraising committee.

A huge pat on the back for Rachel, Vicky, Jenny, Dave, Lingy, JP, Nick, Gary & all the others who contributed. Last year at this time much of the ‘off the field’ running of the club had drifted its way into the hands of the ‘on field’ management team and we were sinking in duties.

Now the club has transformed itself with so many more willing hands, not only on this team but also the newly revamped committee. It is a credit to ALL those involved, and for me personally, it was great to get back to it being a pleasure rather than a burden to attend club functions.

Thanks again to all those who assisted last night on behalf of the players, managers and I who do appreciate all the work being done.

So, why did my sprits need lifting?

A narrow 1-0 defeat against Ridgeons opposition, a tidy performance away from home, then surely we should take some pride in what we achieved?

Yes, we do, but I couldn’t yesterday and I still can’t today help feeling disappointed and frustrated at the outcome of the game. For all involved the sights are high, we take defeat badly and are blasé with wins, the latter I feel we need to savour more.

Two main things, I believe, are causing this frustration; yesterday I felt we deserved something out of the game but that’s football you don’t always get what you deserve.

The bigger frustration is that this type of outcome has spasmodically occurred on several occasions and it's getting tough to actually pin point why.

The players are there, I think the preparation is there, the boys are a great bunch who are working hard on the pitch and at training (in most cases!!) but we cant quite find the consistency we need and expect. But rest assured, we will be working hard and not stop until the solution is found.

The game itself I am not going to go into too much detail.

I thought it was, as the score line suggests, a tight one between two evenly matched sides. What few chances there were, at most, were half chances other than the goal. For this we were caught napping in many areas and it was a disappointing goal to concede.

Why so few chances? For our part, I felt it was down to some poor ball retention throughout the game, which included a lack of a quality final ball to generate the chances.

BP / Hunts, this sounds like our training thread for Tuesday to me.

But let’s finish on some highs. Lee Devlin, I felt, was excellent throughout and thoroughly deserved his man of the match tag. His 3^rd game back and fitness returning.

The new club away kit sponsored by Roadtec arrived and looked first class (see Trevor’s photos when he pastes them onto the site). A big thanks to Stewart Lilley for his generous contribution to the club.

It’s on to Acle next week & another big game with it being the Quarter-finals of the Mummery Cup.