I had been disappointed with Christchurch when I saw them against Bemerton earlier in the season but their start to the game was good, putting Downton under pressure right from the kick off. After 9 minutes they took the lead. The ball was played long through a gap in the defence and a Christchurch player beat the offside flag, took the ball on. The Downton keeper had started to come for the ball and now found himself stranded and struggling to get back into position. He wasn’t able to get down to stop a low shot from flying past him and into the net.
The referee seemed rather particular and gave out three yellow cards for tackles and verbal questioning of his abilities before the next clear cut chance in the 23rd minute. Christchurch worked the ball to the edge of the box and a cross was fired into a crowded penalty area. It looked like one of the waiting forwards would connect with it but it went past all of them and ended up just wide of the far post.
Downton hadn’t offered too much going forwards but came close to an equaliser on the half hour. Kevin Thick dribbled to the edge of the box and then cut the ball back, beating two defenders in the process. He then fired in a shot on target but it was straight at the goalkeeper. A minute later and Downton were back in the game when a long range shot from the left of the area flew towards goal and bounced up and over the keeper. This gave the home team some confidence and they created another chance a couple of minutes later but the shot didn’t test the keeper.
The second half saw some controversy as two goals were disallowed in quick succession. The first “goal” was a close range header from a corner for the home team in the 60th minute. It was disallowed for a foul and the referee had blown just after the header so there weren’t too many complaints. Three minutes later and Christchurch put the ball into the net from a free kick that was taken long towards the penalty area. The ball was flicked on and then hit past the keeper. Both teams had got ready to start the game again and the Downton players were in the centre circle with the ball at their feet. The referee suddenly walked over to his assistant on the near side and after a brief conversation awarded Downton a freekick for what we assumed was an offside. No flag had been put up at the time and understandably the visiting team were furious with the delayed decision.
It looked like the game would be heading to extra time as wave after wave of Christchurch attacks were cleared by a tiring Downton team. In the last minute of the game, the ball was played into the Christchurch area and the Downton recipient went to ground. The referee decided that this was due to a tackle from his marker and pointed to the spot. After a bit of a delay, the penalty was taken and was hit low to the bottom right corner. The keeper guessed the right way and made an excellent save to push the ball towards the far touchline. There was still time for another penalty appeal, this time for handball, but the referee didn’t give it and continued to mystify both sets of supporters with his decision making.
The first half of extra time continued with the same pattern of Christchurch dominating possession but not being able to convert that into chances. In the 95th minute they had a corner and took a shot that hit a Downton defender and winded him. He collapsed on the goalline but instead of putting the ball out, Christchurch played it back into the penalty area and took another shot. The player who had gone down had managed to lift himself up using the post and was trying to get off the pitch when this second shot hit him. The shot would have beaten the keeper so it was a good job he was able to get up again to clear the ball!
There were no clear chances in the second half and while Downton came under a lot of pressure they worked hard and kept the visitors out. So the match then moved to a penalty shoot out. All the players moved to the centre circle and Christchurch prepared to take the first kick. To our surprise the Downton keeper chose to go to the right and managed to save the low shot to give the home team a boost! The scoring went as follows 0.0, 1.0, 1.1, 2.1,2.2,3.2,3.3 as each player put his penalty on target. Downton then missed their next penalty – the ball was hit high to the left and bounced down off the crossbar without crossing the line. Both of the final regular penalties were scored so we went into a sudden death shoot out at 4.4. The scoring then went 4.5, 5.5, 5.6 before a Downton player put the ball wide of the right post to send Christchurch through to the next round.
No comments:
Post a Comment