ANYONE KNOW A DOCTOR ?

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The day started with a bit of a disaster.  We already knew the Alex was away so when at 9:30am I had separate calls from Matt Barber, Paul Barber and Matt Doyle to say they were all ill I knew it could be a tough day.

All of that meant that we would have the bare 11 and that we would have to drastically change the team, mainly the midfield.  Mark Williams moved forward to play along side Henners and Scotty was back along side Mikey in defence.  Phil continued down the right and CJ was in to support James down the left.

The game started and we struggled to settle early on and had a lot of defending to do.  A lot of last ditch tackles and vital interceptions kept us in the game.  Ryan was quickly off his line to any danger and we were beginning to settle.  We were losing the midfield battle and were struggling to get Graham and Dylan into the game.

Eventually after many near misses at our end and some super saves from Ryan, we started to look like we could get forward.  Graham had two opportunities.  The 1st was well saved and the 2nd drifted inches wide.  Dylan was getting more into the game and twice surged up the left hand side and into the box.

Heathway were always a threat at the other and got what was probably a deserved lead after 15 minutes.  I remember Ryan making two great point blank saves before the 3rd effort crept in.  Graham had another shot saved and at half time we were lucky to only be 1 nil down.  But at the same time we had created two good opportunities to score ourselves.

The half time chat was mainly about the midfield battle that we felt we were losing.  Defensively we had done ok and Deano and James seemed to have the flanks under control.  Scott was impressive in the 1st half and Mikey was making crucial interventions.

The 2nd half was a little better for us.  Mark and Henners won more of the ball and Phil was more of an attacking threat.  Graham and Dylan again had chances but it seemed to be just one of those days where everything hit the keeper, or in Mark Williams case, the crossbar.

Again we defended fairly soundly.  The work rate was impressive and we fought until the very end, which was nice to see.

The 2nd goal came and that killed the game off for us. 

I told the lads that had we won today we would have had a fantastic start to the season.  Defeat means we have still done well and we are better placed than most of us expected if you look at last season.  We have beaten some very good sides and when you consider today we lost 2 nil against the so called best team in our division and we had four players away sick I don’t think we did badly at all.

If you add any of those players to the game today I think you can see the result could have been much different.  The encouraging thing was that even with a patched up team we had 5 or 6 chances to score and on another day we may have won this one.

Special mentions to man of the match Ryan, and Scott who I thought were excellent.  The other defenders battled bravely and Mark had a strong 2nd half in midfield.

It’s been a great start to the season for us.  We are sat in the top 5 of the league and we are in the last 16 of the major cup.  Not bad.  We have a lot to play for after Christmas so keep up the good work lads.

Steve