Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Game 31: Downton 2.0 Amesbury Town (WESS 1) 31.03.09


The original plan was to go to Laverstock v Alton with Alan, as he hasn’t visited Laverstock’s ground before. Unfortunately he couldn’t make it up to Salisbury for the game so Andy and I drove out to Downton for our second visit of the season to Wick Lane. The appeal of this game was the visitors – a local derby against Amesbury.




Amesbury started the game well but Downton were gifted an opportunity to score on 11 minutes when the Amesbury keeper spilt an easy catch and let the ball go out for a corner. Downton played the ball into the centre and the ball was headed into the back of the net. After that the game settled down a bit although the referee was a bit of an enigma with his inconsistent and inaccurate decisions which wound up players from both teams. Amesbury put together some nice passes and moves but lacked the quality to take on the Downton defence and break them down. Too many balls from both teams were just hoofed forward hopefully with little end result. Neither Andy nor I could remember seeing a shot on target other than the goal by the time the referee whistled for halftime.


The second half started in a similar fashion. On 55 minutes Downton put together a good move and one of their players was about to shoot from outside the area when a sliding tackle from the side caught him. Although there were two other Amesbury players in line and running back, the referee decided that this was a goal scoring opportunity and sent the Amesbury player off. There were a few angry shouts from the away bench as a Downton player put the ball on the penalty spot – luckily the referee calmed the situation down by ordering a free kick to be taken from just outside the area. The kick was wasted – a high shot above the penalty box.


Amesbury didn’t seem too fazed by the sending off and put together some more good moves that the Downton defence had to be alert to. On 85 minutes Downton had a corner and forced two superb saves from the Amesbury keeper – one dive to the right to save a shot, one reflex save to the left to stop the rebound from hitting the back of the net. However he was unable to stop a shot a minute later that went through the net from close range. At first it looked like the ball had gone wide as it hit the hoarding at the side but the reaction of the players and the referee confirmed it had gone in.


The last couple of minutes saw a lot of dissent from the Amesbury players towards the crowd, their opponents, the referee and their own teammates. After the referee blew the final whistle, this verbal abuse was continued by one of the Amesbury players. To the surprise of the crowd, the player was shown a red card as he was still on the pitch. It could have been worse but the Amesbury manager was quickly over to order the player into the dressing room.

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