Saturday December 13th 2014 – Bishops Lydeard v Wrington Redhill

The ‘Redskins’ had a long trip to high flying Bishops Lydeard in this last sixteen cup fixture.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon Wrington kicked off playing down the slope. The good progress that has been made following a couple of bad results in November continued as Wrington played some well controlled football moving the ball well along the backline and through midfield.

The first of a number of half chances for Wrington fell to Neil Andow, whose touch was exceptional throughout the game, Andow finding space in the box following some neat play down the right through Leigh White and Mike Rowcliffe shot low to the keepers left forcing a good save.

The home team were also always dangerous with a very quick and skilful centre forward who kept the Wrington defence on their toes. On 25 minutes the Lydeard forward managed to break through the Wrington defence to be one-on-one with Cheeseman in the Wrington goal. Cheeseman who had earlier in the ‘warm up’ dislocated his finger was off his line in flash and diving at the forwards feet smothered the chance.The game was evenly balanced with good football being played by both sides. A long range effort from Mike Rowcliffe just cleared the bar as the half drew to a close. H/T

The second half kicked off and the game followed the same pattern. Lydeard had a decent chance on 55 minute but shot wide of Cheesemans’ goal. Wrington continued to play neat football and with the excellent Sam Johnson hitting some lovely raking long passes to the front men Wrington began to assert themselves over the home team. Tom Smith was then forced off with a knee injury to be replaced by Kyle Selman.

The break through came in the 74th minute after Simon Riggs won a tackle in midfield and slipped the ball To Mike Rowcliffe, Rowcliffe got his head up and played a nice ball to Andow who had pulled off his marker giving himself a clear view of goal. As ball arrived at Andows’ feet two Lydeard defenders raced to close him down but Andow got his shot away from the edge of the box with the ball deflecting off a Lydeard defender. The deflection caused the ball to loop over the advancing home keeper and into the back of the Lydeard net. Cue celebrations! 0-1.

The away team then slowed the game down and with the back four being well organised by Johnson and White few chances were created by the home side.

The excellent Rory Thomas continued his driving runs down the left and tackled anything that moved as Lydeard pressed for the equaliser

On 80 minutes Chris Gale was replaced by the returning Ben Ricketts following his 10 month injury ordeal. Welcome back Ben.

The game closed with Wrington on the attack and holding the ball in the corner. This was very pleasing as in training Coach Lee Probert had spoken to the players about game management and the way we played near the end against Broad Plain where we crossed a corner with minutes to go. This time the players kept it in the corner and won 3 throw ins and 3 corners running the clock down. Not crowd pleasing I know good to see the players doing what was asked of them in training.

An excellent overall footballing performance by the Redskins in what was a good game to watch against a young Bishops Lydeard side who played some neat attractive football.

MOM – Rory Thomas (Pictured)

Wrington are ball 5 in the draw which and can be seen live on the BBC at 5pm today…..Ah one day you just wait and see…….