11th November

Keswick Lane

BARDSEY 2 V  2 HEADINGLEY ROVERS

After last weeks great performance against The Ship confidence was running high. On Thursday we had 15 players to choose from. On Friday it was 14 so it was perhaps inevitable that on Sunday we managed to field just 11 players and no subs.

Against that background a point seems to be a good achievement but Bardsey were left ruing a series of missed chances and could have won by two or three goals.

Bardsey started the game brightly and should have been two up in the first five minutes but for some slack finishing. For all our possesion we weren't really making many inroads into the Headingley defence and the failure to take our chances was punished when with one of their few attacks Headingley opened the scoring with a low shot that evaded the unsighted Bardsey keeper. Things got even worse when they increased their lead with another scrappy goal resulting from a loose ball in the box which the Bardsey defence had failed to clear.

The Bardsey faithful on the touchline couldn't believe that so much good football and possesion hadn't been rewarded but some semblence of justice was realised when good work down the Bardsey left by LARNER and FRANKLIN (c) left GOLDIE with a simple tap in to give us hope for the second half.

The half time team talk was quite easy as we hadn't done anything particularly wrong in the first half but had given the oppositions attack a little too much space. The Bardsey defence acted on this and RAWNSLEY and DALBY (A) never gave the opposition center forward a sniff of the ball in the second half. WIth new recruit Ashley DALBY and RIPTON running mid-field Bardsey really took control of the game and it was only a matter of minutes into the second half when GOLDIE cut inside and placed the ball across the keeper into the bottom left hand corner. At this point a win seemed inevitable as CLAYTON decided he was a winger and his forays into the opposition half caused all sorts of problems and should have resulted in at least a goal but our poor finishing  again led to the ball flying high and wide. FRANKLIN (C) who had been causing problems the Headingley  defence went on a mazy run and was impeded for a penalty which should have put the game beyond doubt but again we had cause to bemoan our luck as the resultant spot kick  sailed over the railway embankment and landed somewhere in the Congreves after appearing momentarily on the radar at Leeds Bradford airport. More chances came and went and the game should have been put to bed on several more occasions but it was one of those days. We will play worse and get all three points.

In past weeks we have almost been conducting a damage limitation excercise against teams and it is a measure of how far we've progressed that we are now unhappy when we dont win. There is now a real confidence in the team and whilst we will have harder teams to play we are certainly not the whipping boys of the league.There has been a tremendous improvement in attitude and football ability since the start of the season and we need to build on this to ensure at least a mid table position.

Team  - Cullen,Bulley,Clayton,Dalby(a),Rawnsley,Dalby(Ash)Franklin(T),Ripton,Franklin(C)Goldie,Larner.

Sub - Had he bothered to turn up - Deacey