Barnstoneworth B North vs Doyalson Report

With our Round 14 game having been washed out, Round 15 saw Barnstoneworth playing Doyalson in our second ever game on Terry Oval, the playing surface of which had been done no favours from the rain that had fallen during the week leading up to the game.

With four players again unavailable this week, we were fortunate to be able to get Joe Weston to back up for us straight after his game, meaning our having 3 subs on the bench.

Having had to grind out a tough 1-0 win against our opponents in the away fixture, we knew that we were in for another tough game this time around and so it proved. A tight contest again saw few clear opportunities for either side, although we were somewhat unlucky to see a couple of reasonable chances go begging, including Frank having a shot come back off the post and Neal narrowly lifting the ball over the bar when one on one with their keeper.

With the game deadlocked going into at the break, our half time talk largely centred on trying to bring some more shape and structure to our play, in order to try to exert more control on the game, as this was where we were chiefly struggling.

Despite an improved showing after the restart, Doyalson somehow managed to turn our defence around with a counter attack from just inside our own half to open the scoring and take the lead. Once again, going behind seemed to give us a bit more drive but we were still struggling to control the game to any great degree and when the referee awarded a harsh penalty to our opponents, it looked like it simply wasn’t going to be our day. The fact that Geoff pulled off a great save was probably karma showing its hand, as the award of the penalty should never have happened, so sometimes the right outcome does seemingly prevail. Spurred on by this, we proceeded to take the game to Doyalson but despite our increased efforts, we simply couldn’t find a way to get back into the game, with proceedings capped off by having our own decent shout for a penalty harshly waved away by the referee.

The game effectively petered out to see us run out 1-0 losers and given our level of performance for most of the game, perhaps we were never really likely to get anything more, although it is probably fair to say that a draw would not have seen many complaints from Doyalson. Once more, our performance simply wasn’t good enough and the team is having to tough it out at the moment, until our missing players are able to return. Rather fortuitously other results in our division went our way again, meaning that we maintained our 6 point lead at the top of the table but we cannot keep on relying on that happening if we aren’t delivering on the pitch ourselves.

The man of the match award unsurprisingly went to Geoff for keeping us in the game, whilst the Scrotum medal went to Dougie (take a touch mate!) White, for his second horror shot of the season, which was only prevented from going for a throw in by Rod scampering after the ball and keeping it in!

Final Score: Barnstoneworth 0 – 1 Doyalson