Post by Dave on Sept 4, 2010 19:01:01 GMT
I’m really starting to enjoy my Saturday afternoons watching local football following the Ipplepen second team Ant is playing in, a great bunch of lads and there are a number of very good players in the side and their battling performance this afternoon earned them what I thought was a well deserved victory.
For a pitch in the South Devon league it has to be said Kingskerwell’s is a good pitch, flat with a good covering of grass and the only down side might be the fact there is no high fencing on the side where there are houses etc behind the hedge and this means a long walk out of the ground to go and try to find the ball when it goes over the hedge.
On the other side of the pitch can be found the cricket pitch and the whole area is very large and you soon forget the main busy A380 is only a stones throw away and you hardly notice any traffic noise at all. Despite all the grass there is away from the pitch itself it’s a shame some dog owners let their dogs foul the pitch and some had to be cleared off the pitch before the ref was prepared to let the game get underway.
I thought Ant had a really good game and made many intelligent passes, he always looks so natural on the ball but I’m sure he might say he is a bit disappointed he did not take at least two of the chances he had.
The Kingkerswell side was made up of a mixture of young up and coming players and a few old heads who clearly have played for the first team in the past and while they may have lacked any pace as such, knew how to defend properly at this level.
Kingkerswell started the game slightly better than Ipplepen and looked a neat passing side with out really creating to many clear cut chances, but they did take and early lead in the game. Two players from each side were battling away getting tackles in and the ball could have broken either way, but it was Kingskerswell who came away with the ball and it was played out wide to their right winger who sent in a perfect cross to the far post where their tallest player was waiting to head the ball back across and over the keeper.
Ipplepen stepped up their game and started dominating the play and created chance after chance that all went begging. They thought they had equalised after the ball was chipped toward the penalty stop for the edge of the box and was headed home. The linesman gave off side but it was a really tight call and the Ipplepen players felt he had got it wrong.
Ant then took a free kick just outside the box and he normally goes for the top right hand corner, but went for the other side and put his shot just wide of the post. His strike partner then cut into the box on the left hand side and shot across the keeper and I though it was going to go in but it just went wide of the far post.
Ant was to have three more chances before the ref blew for the end of the first half, one he had to take very quickly on the edge of the box as he was being closed down that just went wide, a second that was a power driver also from the edge of the box that got blocked on route and a third where the ball came to him with the keeper rushing out on top of him and Ant had to lob the ball up over him, he got that part right but the ball just bounced past the left hand post.
The first part of he second half the games was far more equal but without either side creating too much but both were playing some very neat passing football. Ant had a much freer role and was in the middle one minute and out on the left or right wing the next to get on the end of a pass.
It was from a break from the middle out to the left wing to get on the end of a ball played down the channel he made the equalising goal, his marker had followed him out there but Ant turned him looked up and saw his strike partner breaking into the box at pace and played and inch perfect pass to him to blast the ball past the keeper.
Then a chance at the other end saw a the ball hit the inside of the far right hand post and come back out into play and Ipplepen were lucky not to finds themselves behind again.
Ipplepens winning goal was a very strange one indeed, from an Ipplepen corner one of the Kingkerswell defenders went down injured and required treatment. After getting some he took his place back on the pitch and the ref spotted him and asked him to leave the field on the halfway line. This he did but walked very slowly and the Kingkerswell keeper was getting a bit frustrated waiting to take the goal kick. When he was given the signal to do so he some how kicked his own foot before kicking the ball and it only just got outside the area when Ants strike partner picked it up and fired a shot over the keeper who was trying to get up and into the net.
The last ten minutes was mostly all Kingskerwell as they looked to get a goal back they were reduced to having to shoot from distance more often than not and never really threatened the Ipplepen goal despite some very neat built up play especially down the left hand side.
Ant had one more great chance and a strike that had goal written all over it, but it just got blocked on the line and over for a corner. A goal mouth scramble resulted from the corner with maybe six shots fired at the Kingskerswell goal with each and every one of them getting blocked somehow.
Time to head back to the car and see how our boys had done; well we had to lose sometime didn’t we.
