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7th Oct: Nailsea 3 Freedom Bath 2
This game was what football is all about, Freedom had car trouble and were unavoidable late, the ref never turned up and with freedom in yellow and Nailsea in gold, a clash of colours was on the cards. Fortunately a set of red bibs (for freedom) came to the rescue and Kelvin Hall, on the bench for Nailsea, gallantly refereed the first half.
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The first half was a strange affair with Nailsea awful and yet good in spells. Freedom seemed to be first to react to any loose or 50/50 balls, but at times Nailsea stroked the ball around the pitch like a conference side. Nailsea were creating chances and Marksy, with three shots and two headers, could have easily stormed to the top of the Nailsea goal scoring charts if he could have finished.
Freedom pushed forward at every opportunity with their left winger causing all sorts of problems. Seconds before half time the ball was ping ponging around the Nailsea box as we just stood and watched it and allow one of the many unmarked freedom players to hammer home to take a 1-0 lead into half time.
The half-time team talk was simple as we all agreed we were awful and needed to step it up and close freedom down quicker. Will Bradbury was moved to the left wing with Kelvin Hall coming on up front for Pete Rowe who gallantly took over referee duties and did a Stirling job in the process.
Nailsea started stronger in the second half pushing forward at every chance and within 10 minutes on his sixth attempt Marksy equalised. Latching onto a Kelvin Hall cross he brushed aside two challenges and bundled the ball over the line.
Within minutes of scoring he was substituted mainly cos he had to get to Manchester by 5pm to watch England play. It should be pointed out that our gaffer decided to miss the game so he could catch a train to Manchester and spend the afternoon drinking! Anyway Feargo came on and within minutes was ruffling the feathers of the freedom players. Following a hard but fair challenge, Feargo was told several times by a freedom player that he was not to touch him again in this game! Following a foul on feargo, Kelvin hall stepped up and found a space between the wall and goal post to squeeze the ball into the keepers right hand corner for 2-1. Freedom kept pushing forward but Nailsea upped their game and following a corner, Mike Wood swung wildly at a ball to loop it over the keeper from the edge of the box for 3-1, with just over ten minutes to go.
Freedom continued to push forward but were thwarted by solid defending from the Nailsea back four. However, an error by yours truly led to freedom making it 3-2 four minutes from the end. With the entire Nailsea team pushing out, yours truly didn't, playing the freedom forwards on side and one of them stabbed in from a couple of yards.
However Nailsea held firm and ran out 3-2 winners. Sam Andrews was excellent in goal and Tim Searle, in my opinion, had his best game for Nailsea for a long time. Other than that there were no real stand out performances as evidenced by the man of the match voting, which Sam Andrews won and Mike Wood coming second. Jon Lansdown won MVP, with the Freedom left winger getting our vote.
Report by John 'Brittonaldo' Britton
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