Norton Athletic Veterans 0 Kings Arms Crusaders 3

Norton defeated despite improved performance

Norton welcomed title challengers Kings Arms to the Subcourse on what was bright but cold day.

We also welcomed to the squad new signing Daniel Johnstone and for once we had the luxury of a full compliment of 16 players available and were hopeful of getting something from the game.

Kings Arms were missing several players but had a youthful look about their forward line and the opening exchanges were fairly even as both sides showed some good promise.

Unfortunately, it was the visitors that drew first blood as they countered Norton down the right and the resulting shot struck the base of the post. Pinging back out to Scott Yarham around the penalty spot Yarham managed to find the bottom corner of the net when trying to put the ball out for a corner, thinking he was under pressure.

Norton set about the task getting back into the game well and were certainly more than a match for the visitors and our play from back to front was decent, but we struggled to get in behind near the box leading to many shots from distance that rarely threatened.

With ten minutes of the first half remaining it was another mistake that led to the second Kings Arms goal as the ball got caught in the wind when trying to head clear and fell invitingly to Kings Arms player to score from 10 yards leaving the visitors with a 2-0 lead at the break.

The second half saw the wind in favour of Norton and this led to a siege on the Kings Arms defence but often the promising moves broke down.

Then after the next round of changes the tempo dropped and Kings Arms worked a fine 3rd goal building down the right-hand side before crossing and scoring from 8 yards.

This was the final goal and once again we fell to a defeat without scoring ourselves and with us only scoring 7 goals from 8 games this season it is no wonder we are involved in a relegation scrap.

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