MAGPIES AND BAR HILL STRUGGLE IN PITCH BATTLE

Bar Hill  3  Magpies 2001  1

A beautiful and sunny if frosty morning greeted me this morning, the sort there has been pretty much every day this last week, giving the first impressions that Spring is finally on its way. I’ve had an interesting week that included being knocked down a staircase on Tuesday evening by a rogue wardrobe leaving my body and ego somewhat bruised but luckily the damage wasn’t too bad and although reluctant to play today I wasn’t actually unable to. As I stepped into the shower this morning I got a shout that Geoff has just called me which gave me a few minutes under running water to second guess the nature of his call. Did he need a signing on form, did a player need a lift, or worst of all, the dreaded “I need you to play” call.  It turned out to be the latter as last minute drop-outs had reduced our squad once again. Now it’s not that I don’t want to play, much more it’s the knowledge that hopes of a good result are always tempered by missing personnel, the more missing the greater the effect. A trip to the league leaders is always a daunting task, especially so in a season like we’ve had, and it is made even less enticing with a depleted squad. As I arrived in Bar Hill, unusually a few minutes late, it transpired that we did actually have twelve players, but given two of those were myself and Phil May, two of the oldest players in the Senior Division it was going to be hard work for one of us at least. That player turned out to be Phil as he got the unenviable task of playing right back whilst I would be the lone sub. With both centre-backs again missing Dave Morley and Dan Argent fulfilled the central roles and out of Magpies back four only left back Tom Murphy would be in his usual position. Garth Brewer was, of course, in goal, and with the triumvirate of Mays in midfield, Luke Minshall wide right and Gary James and Kevin Jones in attack Magpies on paper looked good going forward but a bit lacking in defensive height. As we approached kick off it became clear that both sides would be tested by a pitch that at best could be described as uneven, at worst agricultural. Although still frosty in one small area and rather hard and lumpy in others, it was playable and given we were on paper the weaker side a ropey pitch was probably going to favour us more than our hosts. Not only that, two of our rare victories this season have come at Ickleton and Ashwell, and without wishing to be disrespectful to those teams, both of those venues suffer from the wretched quality of the playing surface. Magpies lined up resplendent in their dark blue and yellow away kit with our hosts in their traditional blue and white and around ten thirty match referee Mr Mott got the game underway with Bar Hill playing into the low sun.
As expected Bar Hill made the early running and they carved out several chances, some difficult and some thwarted by unhelpful bobbles off the surface. Despite appearing to be certain of scoring twice Bar Hill contrived to waste the early opportunities and Magpies had a few fleeting moments of possession on the Bar Hill half. The game took off on fifteen minutes as a fine move down the right flank saw a deep cross converted first time with style by the Bar Hill striker to give his side the lead. Having fallen behind there was a danger that Magpies might already lose heart and the floodgates might have opened but as it turned out, despite being under almost constant pressure for the opening quarter of the game, the visitor’s had the temerity to equalise with their first attack of note. An early through-ball down the right channel found Luke Minshall through on goal and as the Bar Hill custodian closed him down he found a good low finish which had almost reached the back of the net by the time the desperate attempt at a clearance came from the Bar Hill defender. That made it three goals in his last two games and all pretty much identical, amazing! Soon after another through ball saw Kevin Jones confronted by the Bar Hill keeper on the edge of the area and although he found room to get a shot past him, a defender blocked his effort some distance from the goal and Bar Hill escaped the amazing possibility of actually falling behind. This was pretty much as good as it got for Magpies in the rest of the half as Bar Hill pressed hard to re-take the lead. There was a narrow escape as the post saved the visitors and through the rest of the half only some good interventions from Garth Brewer or the defence in front of him, poor finishing from Bar Hill, a header off the line from Tom Murphy and a big portion of luck kept the score level. Right on the stroke of half-time the pressure finally took its toll as Bar Hill re-took the lead with another fine finish, this time spanked off the inside of the far post and just after the re-start the ref blew for half time.
We weren’t too dispirited with our first half display, the break saw us all looking pretty relaxed and the hope was there that the few weaknesses we had spotted in the Bar Hill defence could be exploited further in the second half. At the same time our luck would need to continue as to be truthful Bar Hill could have been much further ahead than the one goal lead they actually had.
The second half began with Bar Hill again pressing but a few minutes in on a rare Magpies counter, disaster struck as top scorer Kevin Jones went down injured in a strong challenge and after he failed to get back up I soon realised I would be going on to replace him. This change didn’t exactly ruin our hopes but it was going to make life considerably harder. Magpies attacks became less frequent and Bar Hill kept going forward but kept lacking a final ball or were unable to find a good strike on goal. One effort went out for a throw-in after a bad bounce made an accurate strike impossible; others went wide or too high, mostly attributable to the poor state of the pitch. Bar Hill did find a third during this period of sustained pressure with another decent finish, a diving header at the far post from an accurate cross and with a 3-1 lead just after the hour mark only one result seemed feasible. Even so Magpies still had the odd moment, one fine counter-attack which came after a great advantage from the ref after Tom Murphy had been accidentally pole-axed saw Gary James progress down the left flank but with three against one in the box his cross came just too close to the keeper. Not long after Gary James rather unluckily picked up a yellow card for use of the f-word, the ref took it to be directed at him but Gary was adamant it was just a general comment over the course of the game. That’s three in three games for him, and all for dissent of one form or another. We had another half chance as a defensive clearance went horribly wrong and as the ball dropped in the penalty area the Bar Hill custodian caught the sun in his eyes and missed the ball but recovered to gather before I could intervene. At the other end Bar Hill continued to waste a few good chances and had a goal disallowed for a clear offside after a close range finish and the game rather petered out to be honest. By this stage the pitch resembled a scene from the Townswomen’s Guild’s re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbour for anyone familiar with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, or perhaps Derby County’s Baseball Ground for those familiar with 70’s football. I’m showing my age now! Anyway, it was a glue pot all right; the centre line no longer visible at any point within the centre circle, and it was no huge surprise that neither side could put any decent moves together. The final ten minutes seem to fly by and the game ended at 3-1 to the hosts, certainly a fair result even if the score probably flattered us somewhat; on another day Bar Hill could have netted several more. There were plenty of handshakes at the end, good luck wishes for the rest of the season and I made sure I also thanked the ref today who I thought was really very good.
Stand out player for Magpies today was Tom Murphy, so much of his game has come on this season, he was winning headers, tackling back well, getting forward when he could and all round I was dead impressed. Again I have to congratulate Dave Morley and Dan Argent as stand in centre-backs and also Phil May for completing 90 minutes at the age of 53, that’s truly impressive. Garth Brewer also had another really good game so defensively I was more than satisfied. Everyone else worked really hard, got stuck in, and I felt we deserved to keep the score down to the level we did for the effort everyone put in. Last season we came here with arguably a far stronger squad and well ahead of Bar Hill in the table and lost 4-1, today we lost 3-1 so overall that can’t be seen as being so bad. We move on now to a game at Shelford Falcons, the other main pretenders for the title, and another game that will be a bit of a battle. We’ll have injury concerns going into that game but if we make the same level of effort that we did today I’m sure we’ll give them a decent game too. After beating them for the first time ever back at the beginning of the season I’m sure they will try extra hard too so it’s going to be a tough encounter but at least we have nothing to lose. We are yet to discover where it will be played but one thing’s for sure, the pitch can’t possibly be as bad as today’s was.