Rothwell Town 2 Ashford Town 0
from Your Milton Keynes Correspondent
Exactly a third of the season remaining, and still
plenty to play for, with a top seven finish, and a place in the Premier
Division next year, still the aspiration – if the much-publicised pyramid
restructuring actually goes ahead, that is. (I heard from a lad at work this
week that an announcement might be made this week-end). Of course, we have to
proceed on the assumption that it will happen, in which case we currently (i.e.
on Saturday morning) have ten points to make up on the opposition for that 7th
spot, and eight points to make up for 8th place, and a play-off with
the team finishing 8th in the Doc Martens Western Division.
The teams whose results affect us the most are the
three disputing 7th, 8th and 9th places at the
moment (allowing for games in hand, that is) – these are Bashley, Stamford and
Burgess Hill Town, the three teams we play in our second- , third- and
fourth-last games of the season ! Of
course, to make up the lee-way on these teams, we need a storming finish to the
season, which means showing some top-of-the-table form. So far, we’ve been
distinctly mid-table. The figures – won 10, lost 11; 36 goals for, 34 against,
and 11th in the table – tell their own story !
The hope is that the excellent performance and 3-1
victory against top side King’s Lynn last Saturday will have given the team the
spring-board required to mount a big finish, and the fact that we only have to
play three games against the top six sides in our final fourteen means that
there must be every chance of us doing just that. It also appeared that
Rothwell is a good place to follow up that win with another good result, since
The Bones are really struggling this season – surprisingly, for a club that was
in the Premier Division just a few seasons ago. Currently, they are
second-bottom, in a division in which there are several decidedly ropey sides,
and they’ve managed to score only THIRTEEN goals in 26 league games to date.
The lads will also have had the confidence of having played pretty well at
Rothwell for the past two seasons – two years ago we won 0-2, whilst we played
well in a 1-0 defeat last season, having been down to ten men for over an hour,
following Sam Saunders’ red card.
So anyone who saw Ashford beat King’s Lynn last
Saturday will be wondering how they managed to lose 2-0 to Rothwell next time.
Part of the explanation involves The Bones’ recent resurgence, since their last
two games have yielded a 1-1 draw away at Salisbury and a 1-0 victory at
Bashley – so they’ve now taken seven points from their last three games, all of
them against teams in the top half of the table. The real story, though, is
Ashford’s appalling inconsistency, which will probably be the reason for us
ending up with nothing at the end of the season, in spite of the promising
start.
But let’s start at the beginning. Ashford got off on
the right foot by winning the toss, and elected to kick down the pronounced
slope – that’s S-L-O-P-E, pronounced “slope” – that runs diagonally from corner
flag to corner flag. In spite of the statement in the programme that our boys
would play in red & black (!!), you’ll all be reassured to learn that the
shirts were very lime green – Rothwell played in all blue. The team news was that
the same eleven that performed heroics against Lynn started today – Whitehouse
in goal; Gardner, Anderson, Gillman, O’Leary, in defence; a midfield quartet of
(from left to right) Glover, Saunders, Bower and Wade; Joby and Adrianho up
front – with only Dean Hill missing from Saturday’s substitutes line-up, of
Elliott, Azzopardi and Adlington.
Ashford were very slow out of the traps, and did very
little in the first ten minutes. Rothwell, in contrast, was the team to exert
early pressure, and looked anything but a bunch of blokes moping at the foot of
the table. In fact, I should say that the home side performed pretty well all
over the pitch for the duration of the game, but this report is more concerned
about the performance of our own players.
Things started to go wrong as early as the third
minute. A Rothwell corner from the left resulted in Rob Gillman ending up in a
heap in the penalty area, clutching his shoulder. He received attention for
several minutes from physio Owen Jenner – who made Mum and Dad very proud by
not putting a foot or a sponge wrong for the whole of the 90 minutes. Rob
soldiered on, but was only able to continue for another 26 minutes, before
limping off. John Whitehouse also went down, holding his back, as a result of a
corner in the ninth minute, but was able to carry on.
Ashford’s first attack of any substance came in the
eleventh minute. A long throw from Aaron O’Leary, near the left corner flag,
was headed on by Adrian Stone at the near post; the ball broke to Matt Bower,
whose shot from outside the area was pulled well wide.
Things started to go really pear-shaped three minutes
later. Rob Gillman chased a long, lobbed ball back towards his own goal – it
was one of those that lands between the defender and the ‘keeper, so that one
of them has to deal with it. John Whitehouse made the decision to come for the
ball, but failed to collect. A Rothwell player reacted quickest to the
resulting loose ball, and, picking it up near the by-line, pulled the ball back
to No.9 Danny Spencer, who headed into the empty net, with John W. still
struggling to get back into his goal. It wasn’t exactly David James, but
responsibility for Rothwell’s 14th goal of the season should still
be put down to last Saturday’s Man of the Match.
Ashford did respond positively to the goal, and had
their share of half-chances in what was an entertaining and fairly even half,
with both sides playing spirited, attacking football. There were even one or
two flowing moves from our heroes, mainly involving Sam Saunders and Barry
Gardner on the right.
In the fifteenth minute, a minute after going behind,
Matt Bower headed a Barry Gardner corner wide, and then, after 23 minutes,
Matty picked up a clearance from another Barry Gardner cross, and his
long-range chip had to be tipped over the bar by John Hughes in the Rothwell
goal. A minute later, a fairly harsh free-kick was awarded when a Joby
Thorogood cross was charged down by a Rothwell arm, from point-blank range.
Simon Glover, our David Beckham look-alike (at least from a distance, with his
flowing, peroxide locks) swung the free-kick into the six-yard box, but the
home defence managed to scramble the ball away.
Glover, who will be loaned to us by Dover for the
remainder of the season, is obviously an attacking, left-sided midfielder of
some ability. Rothwell obviously thought so, as he was never granted much room,
and, in spite of looking the part, never managed to make a telling
contribution. He did, though, have the visitors’ best chance of the match, on 33
minutes, and was unlucky not to equalise. Sam Saunders put Adrian Stone through
in the inside-right position; Adrianho carried the ball into the area and hit a
sweet shot, on target, but too close to the Rothwell ‘keeper. Hughes managed to
parry the shot, and Glover, swooping on the rebound at the far post, saw his
side-footed shot hit a defender on the line, and run away for a corner.
By this time, Rob Gillman had finally given up the
struggle, after 29 minutes, and had been replaced by the versatile Tom
Adlington in central defence.
Throughout the first half, Rothwell’s attack gave the
Ashford defence plenty to do – particularly Barry Gardner and Martin Anderson,
with Tom Adlington doing a good job as Gillman’s replacement - and our boys did
well to keep the score at 1-0. As the home side pressed forward, there was
space to be found in their defence, and, after 40 minutes, Matt Bower led a
break, and found Simon Glover with loads of room on the left. Glover cut
inside, and the ball eventually found its way back to Matt Bower, but his shot
from just outside the area was straight at the goalie.
Rothwell’s second goal came right on the stroke of
half-time. A cross from the left, just about along Ashford’s 18-yard line, just
sailed over the head of Aaron O’Leary, the last man, and found Danny Spencer
unmarked, just inside the area. He cut inside John Whitehouse, and coolly
struck the ball home for his second goal.
So 2-0 it was at half-time, and the only Ashford Town
success of the whole afternoon came during the interval, when Your Milton
Keynes Correspondent won First Prize on the raffle.
If there was one certainty at this point, though, it
was that Tim Thorogood and Tony Reynolds would tear into the team at half-time,
and there was evidence of this in Ashford’s bright start to the second half
! In the 51st minute, Matt
Bower once again found Simon Glover in plenty of space on the left, but his run
was thwarted when he was obstructed, and a free-kick was awarded to the left of
the penalty area. Sam Saunders came across to take the kick, and, amazingly,
the tiny hobbit, Joby Thorogood, rose to head the ball, but, far less
surprisingly, he only succeeded in getting underneath it.
Throughout the second half, a third Rothwell goal
always seemed more likely than a goal back for the visitors, and, in the 58th
minute, Rothwell’s Ginger Ninja, Reece Lester, went on a solo run, cutting in
from the left – he managed to thread the ball through to Spencer, who was
looking for his hat-trick, but his shot went well over the bar.
Two minutes later, Ashford came forward with Matt
Bower; he chipped the ball forward to Sam Saunders, who had to wait for the
ball to settle, before stabbing the ball straight into the safe hands of John
Hughes.
Tim Thorogood couldn’t let things drift, and, after 62
minutes, made a tactical switch, putting Simon Elliott on in place of Martin
Anderson. This meant that Ashford went on the attack, with a 3-4-3 formation,
with Adrianho dropping off just behind Elliott and Joby.
Simon was in action immediately, pouncing on a loose
ball in the Rothwell area, and battling for the ball on the by-line, first with
a defender, and then with the goal-keeper. Eventually, it was scrambled behind
for a corner, but skipper Joe Wade clearly felt there might have been a case
for a penalty, judging by the way that he pursued the referee. Fortunately,
referee Scholes (clearly no relation) was in a particularly lenient mood this
afternoon, as Joe’s Case for the Prosecution might have earnt him a card – in the
event, not a single card was shown in the whole match.
With Ashford putting the emphasis on attack, Rothwell
continued to look dangerous, and, in the 65th minute, the
ginger-haired Lester went on another run from the left wing – he played a
one-two with Spencer, and his shot on goal pinged off John Whitehouse’s near
post. Two minutes later, it was Jonathon Mitchell’s turn to go on a solo run,
cutting in from the left. His dribble took him into the Ashford penalty area,
but the last man, Tom Adlington, swept the ball behind for a corner. Left-back
Kev Brookes headed the resulting corner just over the bar.
After 71 minutes, Tim T made his final change, with
Aaron O’Leary, who had been down with an injury minutes before, becoming the
third member of the back four that started the game to be substituted. His
replacement was Mike Azzopardi, who took up his usual place on the right side
of midfield; this left just Barry Gardner and Tom Adlington to mark the two
Rothwell strikers, with Matt Bower dropping into a defensive midfield position
as cover.
As it turned out, this last tactical switch had little
effect on the game, as there was little to report after this. Rothwell Manager
Dave Williams replaced goal-scorer Spencer with Cornell Haughton, to try to
exploit Ashford’s reduced cover at the back, but the home side was generally
content to hang on to the two-goal lead, which it did, fairly comfortably.
Whilst this was a terrible result on paper, it was by
no means the worst Ashford performance that I’ve seen in this era, or any other
era for that matter. The two boys up front worked hard for 90 minutes – Adrian
showed a lot of skill, and young Joby continues to grow into the job. We also
looked a lot stronger in midfield than we have at times this season – Joe Wade
looked accomplished and in control, Matt Bower looked a different player from
the one that had looked so rusty down at Fisher, and Sam Saunders is now
looking like the player he was last season. The bottom line, though, is that
there’s still no sign of the consistency that we’re going to need if we’re
going to have a storming finish to the season that will give us a chance of a
top-seven finish.
I’m reminded of a scene from “Return of the King”, in
which Pippin and Gandalf the White stand on the battlements of Minas Tirith,
gazing across at the mountains of Mordor.
PIPPIN: Is there any hope, Gandalf ? - For Sam and Frodo ?
GANDALF: There never was much hope.
We know how you feel, lads !
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