Challenging game against Wooten

The 3s came together a little early for their 4pm push back to try to help us understand how we wanted to play for the new season, although we had plenty of people at training, it always takes a little time to get it all working together. Wooten-under-Edge were the visitors to Gordano and are in a comparable league, so a good game was hoped for. The line up included two new players who had just become old enough and so it was a pleasure to have Charlie C and Dan K joining us, possibly in a first for the club we had a dad and both sons playing, with Charlie's Dad DC and brother Jack also on the field. The game started in a calm manner with both sides looking to find the weakness in the opposition, but it was apparent early on that the warm weather and possible lack of fitness might count against North in the encounter. A strong and resolute defence broke down any slow play from Wooten and cleared the ball well through the team creating opportunities to get forward. However it was Wooten who made the breakthrough, seizing on some slack play by North in the Wooten half a fast break made life difficult fo our defence and they were able to pass it effectively into the back of Tim Graham's goal giving him no chance. The first half continued in the same manner with some sloppy play from North eventually leading to another goal in the same manner for Wooten.

The half time talk from Captain Colin Ainsworth and Coach Jon Venn highlighted some things to work on and we came out in the second half expecting our game to improve, which it did, almost immediately some effective passing from the back got the ball through to PT who went unchallenged for a long period until he could get the ball to Shaun Huxham who moved the ball on to his reverse to try to evadde the on rushing keeper and cooly slotted it in on under the keepers out stretched arm. The game continued with an ebb and flow between the ends which gave neither keeper alot to do, but certainly wore down the players running in the midfield. Shaun nearly managed to get the equaliser, but despite getting past the keeper, the ball came back off the inside of the post and the closest player to clear up was a Wooten defender rather than Charlie C who was close to getting a debut goal.

A 2-1 loss was probably a fair result and highlighted points for us to work on during the next training session before the match between the Men's 2s and 3s before the club day next week.