02/18/07

2006/2007 Season 07/10/2006

Nice job on the nets lads!  Have you grown?

If ever there was an opportunity to use the footballing cliché “a game of two halves” this would be it. The points were Buxted’s for the taking at half-time, as the manager confidently pointed out. Unfortunately the team took this to mean they didn’t have to turn up for the second half at all, and the price was duly paid.

This was no great spectacle from either side and it was soon obvious that Lindfield’s league position flattered them slightly as Buxted soon stamped some authority on the game. Kicking from the road end they harried well in the opening quarter and were duly awarded a penalty for hand-ball after some consistent pressure. The captain made no mistake from the spot and all was going well at his point.

 Unfortunately a 6-yard box clearance from a corner at the other end struck a Lindfield player and pinged past Harper for the equaliser. The pressure continued to be applied just as strongly though in the Lindfield half of the pitch, and Craig eventually got on the end of a weak back-pass to round the keeper and tap the ball home for number 2 for the home side, with only seconds of the half remaining. The greens’ right back had taken a roasting throughout the half and the defence as a whole looked pretty shaken as they trudged off, having been stretched ragged for long periods.

Lindfield were clearly not going to take the inevitable defeat lying down though and showed a fierce determination to do something about it from the start of the second half. Their 2 goals in this half were not much prettier than their 1^st but they forced the issue for both, and Buxted have only their own complacency to blame for the defeat. No-one was singularly to blame but the defence were casual, the midfield almost ineffective and the strikers did next to nothing in the way of tracking back and helping out. The side was simply not joined up and the ball hardly left our half for the first half an hour. The closest we came during this period was a shot across the goal from Lee which skimmed the cross-bar. After conceding the winning goal Buxted finally woke up and with Gareth and Steve switching about and making some runs from the back, Buxted started to de-camp and it looked as though a point, at least, may be salvageable. The midfield had suffered some knocks though and were still unable to really make any decent plays, leaving Lindfield to clear their lines comfortably until the final whistle. In retrospect the manager should have replaced one of the midfield crocks with Bob from the bench for about the last 10 minutes, as his work-rate may have done enough to shake things up in attack!

Lindfield will be much pleased by their day’s work, as they may have felt aggrieved by the penalty decision here; and the final result leaves them in an even more flattering league position of joint-top. Congratulations to them.

There are lessons to be learnt from this collapse.

Buxted should NEVER again be as smug with any lead in a game, let alone a narrow one goal advantage, to gift the game back to the opposition. There is no harm in recognising when we are the better team, but we MUST learn to use the memory of this ludicrous defeat to kill poorer teams off in future. The manager is as guilty as the players for the nature of the defeat and will not forget the mistakes made here.

Good points.

Simon Butler looked like a completely different player! So much so that he pushed Martin Batstone very close for the home side’s man-of-the-match award. Martin claims it on the basis of putting in another consistent performance and being almost the only player who could have walked off today without a small pang of self-doubt.

Lance Ingram.

Matty wins pogo contest...                              Shane practices his hugging...