Sunday 18 November 2007 vs. Owls Trust (home)

It doesn’t seem so long ago since we were playing on warm sunny days and worrying about players over-heating! This was a wet, windy and murky Sunday afternoon up at Reignhead, and our main concern was keeping warm and whether the ref would turn up!

Now Owls Trust can be a difficult side to play against, they invariably have some skilful players and are quite capable of punishing you if you don’t pay attention to the details. Having beaten them once already this season, there was nothing to fear other than us adopting a "this’ll be easy" approach. We needed to bring last week’s grit and determination into this game, and stamp our authority on it, early doors.

Finally the ref. arrived (traffic had been bad) and we kicked off. Almost immediately we began to dictate the pace and shape of the game, and took an early lead through Ross with 5 minutes gone. I was well proud of them as they went about their task of clinically "killing off the game" – the sign of a team that is maturing all the time.

Three more goals - Danny (15 mins.), Ross (30 mins.) and Will (35 mins.) and we reached half time in a really commanding position. In the team-talk we didn’t need to say much beyond, "more of the same, please".

And that’s what we did – only better! Second half goals from Ross (3 more), Danny (2 more) and Sam, and we were coasting. The only slight concern was the number of chances we created and missed! Still, no complaints from me - we were cool, calm and collected, and let our football do the talking for us. As I’ve said before, it’s not just goals that win games and the clean sheet was testimony to the hard work of everyone.

The only downside to the game was that one of the Owls Trust lads took a bad knock in the last minute, and unfortunately this later turned out to be a fracture.

Another good result and another excellent all-round team performance. We picked out Ross & Danny for Man of the Match but in truth it could have been several of the team.

So… our “Five Games to Christmas” run continues. Six points from six so far!