On a bitterly cold day, The Colts travelled down to Willingdon in the hope of building on the 1-0 win we picked up against the same opposition two weeks ago. It’s fair to say that we have prepared for previous games a lot better than this, the two senior members of our team Barnsey and Dan Mac both arriving at the Birch 15 minutes after the scheduled meet time! Fines of a fiver each seemed justified and is a welcome boost to our end of season curry pot! Finally we set off for Willingdon. Conor put the post code into his John Cleese voiced sat nav stating “John will lead the way”.

Arriving at the pitch, it had a slightly soviet feel about it. Hip high weeds in the car park and snow covering part of the pitch, we knew we would be in for a tough day. For one reason or another, we were light in numbers and this resulted in Mike Neale’s American friend codename ‘Steve King’  being drafted in on the bench at the last minute and when asked where he likes to play he answered “Offense”!

Mick ran through the team and told us what he expected from each one of us and we went out for our warm up determined to get a result out of this game. The first half was pretty even stevens as far as chances go. Adam hit the post, Jack came close and Ben put in a few good free kicks which caused their back four some trouble. They had their chances too, their big forward missed a one on one with Barnsey and the same forward put a free kick just over. At times we lacked a bit of composure on the ball, but perhaps this was to be expected as the pitch was in awful condition and most of us lacked match practice. We worked out before the game that I would be the spare man at the back and would leave the marking to Chris and the full backs Woody and Mike Neale. At first, this concept seemed a bit alien to us but we all grew into our roles as the game went on and it worked very well.

The second half continued where the first had left off. We continued to create chances, our midfield trio Adam, Conor and Joe dominating their midfield,  the front three of Jack, Dan Mac and Ben all working hard to try and grab us a goal and the back four looking comfortable. Their left winger looked pretty good but didn’t get a chance to show it as Woody completely marked him out of the game. This resulted in the winger being taken off and leaving the pitch in a bit of a mood!

The game finished 0-0 and we won our head to head with Willingdon. Although I was awarded MOM I honestly thought that any member of the team could have got it. I thought Conor was magnificent on his return, Woody was equally as superb, Ben didn’t throw a wobbly and Barnsey pulled off a few great saves in goal. I see this game as two points dropped and hopefully next week we can push on a bit further and get the win.