Having witnessed 5 AFCB defeats in a row I was very much
looking forward to seeing Poole Town v Sholing and I was to be rewarded for my
bravery on such a cold night, despite yet another restricted view…..
Sholing soon warmed the cockles of my heart by going back to
the grass roots of football by putting the fat kid in goal. All I needed to see
was the small kid with the oversized kit and bottle bottomed glasses playing
safely away from trouble on the wing and my day would have been made.
Poole started very much on the front foot and as early as
the 3rd minute Devlin had a rasping shot blocked wide by a last gasp
challenge.
From then on it was the Emmerson and Burbidge show. Cultured
passing from Emmerson put Burbidge through time and time again and Burb’s skill
and trickery gave him extra space to fire in telling cross after cross.
It was from one of these combinations that Poole gained a
corner after Burbidge amazingly kept the ball in and his resulting cross was
headed behind. From the corner, on 18 minutes, Brooks rose the highest to head
the ball home.
Let’s face it, the keeper wasn’t going to jump that high
which did make us wonder why the next 2 chances for Devlin were struck along
the ground. There was never enough clearance between the keeper’s low centre of
gravity and the ground to score there.
At this point I remembered that the last time I saw Emmerson
play, he played left back, so I wondered why he was at right back. This
question was asked time and time again as his replacement, Dibba, clearly didn’t
relish the left back position.
I won’t harp on too much, but in the second half Dibba fell over
and the ball hit him and went out – that was his best contribution of the game.
My pal offered to go get his boots, but refused to take his woolly hat off so
the substitution never happened.
On 34 minutes, yet another attack from Sholing down the right
(theme developing) had the ball crossed to Smeeton. It all looked safe enough
but a smart turn to his right gave him space to smash the ball left footed into
the right hand corner of the goal. In fairness it was a good goal, but was
against the run of play.
We all enjoyed Walker’s ode to the Bee Gees shouting “Stay
Alive” for the remaining 11 minutes but despite Burbidge running riot down the
right, the half ended 1-1
We’d invited youngsters to the game and they ran to the bar
as us old timers creaked our way from the pitch – thank goodness for that – I’d
have never been served
Second half and Sholing clearly had ideas above their
station as they were all over Poole. In a complete reverse of the first half
Poole struggled to keep or clear the ball and the weakness on Poole’s left was
being cruelly exposed
Walker’s cry of “if he’s there to be smashed, smash him” was
taken as literally as it was intended as their 5 had the audacity to show
tekkers worthy of a Soccer AM showboat sequence. He found it rather harder to
complete the breathtaking move with a boot up his a**e.
By now Charles and Cann had been brought on by Killick in a
brave attacking move.
Slowly Poole began to get a toehold in the game and Sholing
started to foul a little more regularly. On 70 minutes one such foul resulted
in a free kick wide on the right half way between the box and the half way
line.
Just as the ball was struck, whipping the ball in wickedly,
the Red and White army played their trump card and wafted 2 portions of chips
and a saveloy sausage from behind the goal and while their keeper was
understandably distracted, Charles ran in and headed home.
10 minutes later from a corner Poole scored again but the
referee disallowed it – we couldn’t work out why, can you?
Poole then did a lot of running into corners and were almost
made to pay as a last gasp Sholing attack on the left had the ball crossed in
and just poked wide by their attacker at full stretch
Summary – A well below par performance but despite it being
ugly, it was still a win. Positives were the Burbidge/Emmerson partnership and
the fact that Poole have such attacking options on the bench. Negatives – not
enough strength in depth in defence
Star Man – Emmerson – looks effortless on the ball and let
no-one past in defence (Burbidge has every right to feel disappointed)
No comments:
Post a Comment