AVON YOUTH LEAGUE U’14 DIV 3  

SUN 30 OCT 05

 THORNBURY COLTS     2

FRY CLUB COLTS          3

 Our first game for 3 weeks following the mid Autumn break saw us travel to a real ‘away’ game at Thornbury’s Mundy playing fields. The boys had enjoyed 3 training sessions since our last fixture and looked ready for competitive football. Our only difficulty was that we had just the bare 11 for this game but as you will see that made little difference.

 On a very large pitch we soon settled into some good early possession creating early opportunities for James Boulton and Brad Monelle. Our defence were rarely troubled with Kyle Curtis, filling in for the absent James Hurrell Smith, and Michael Payne keeping a tight line. However, it was Thornbury who struck the first blow following a mis-kicked cross which cannoned off the top of Craig Francis’ crossbar and fell goalside for Thornbury striker to have a simple tap in to go 1-0 up. This piece of bad luck spurred on our team as Mo Bouaziz and Oli Randall soon gained control and dominated the midfield. A great ball down the wing from Dean Lapham set up Brad Monelle to get right to the bye line and cross for Jason Oliver to flick the ball onto James Boulton who scored a deserved equaliser. Playing left midfield today James was really playing well and deserved his goal. We finished the half much stronger and the feeling was there were more goals to come.

 The second half continued in the same fashion with both Danny McCarthy and Jordan Knight offering good support on the outside flanks which opened up the middle of the pitch. 2 great crosses in to Brad Monelle gave him the chance to show what a good finisher he is to put us 3-1 ahead and continue our dominance. Further pressure in the Thornbury half kept our keeper Craig Francis a virtual spectator until a bizarre incident 2 minutes from time when we failed to clear the ball in our own box and the referee deemed our captain Oli Randall called ‘My ball’, when he clearly shouted his name, and awarded the home side a direct free kick inside the penalty box. From the resulting kick the ball deflected onto the inside of our post and spun back out and then back in towards the goal line before being cleared by Kyle. Incredibly the referee gave this as a goal despite my clear view as linesman on the bye line and my resulting protest that there was absolutely no way the ball could cross the goal line and rebound off the inside of the post at the same time. The referee was having none of it and would not reason with my views already deciding it was a goal. Fortunately we had taken our chances earlier in the game and this proved nothing more than a consolation. Just goes to show though how one bad decision could have had such an effect on a result.

 With all 11 players playing so well, this weeks choice for Man of the Match was probably going to the hardest so far this season. However, after much debate by the parents it was decided once again that Brad Monelle was awarded the trophy for such a good performance up front and finishing his chances well enough to win us the game.

SQUAD: Craig Francis, Michael Payne, Oli Randall, James Boulton,  Jordan Knight, Brad Monelle, Dean Lapham,  Kyle Curtis, Jason Oliver, Danny McCarthy, Mo Bouaziz