Careless WWFC See Winning Run Brought To Halt

This morning we played AFC Woking at Wheatsheaf Rec in our 'home' match against the reigning champions. Their recent results had been poor, but we were aware that they had made some new signings and would have made improvements for this match.

The pitch at Wheatsheaf is very small. It is very compact and this lead to a scrappy match full of direct football. Neither team had any time or space to create in midfield and much of the game bypassed the centre of the pitch.

It all came down to who could deal with the long balls and set pieces better and it is fair to say our visitors were superior to us in this regard.

AFC Woking went close in the first two minutes as a header from a corner hit Damian Lynch and then the post, but they took the lead inside 10 minutes when a long ball got them in behind and their right winger's cutback flicked home off Gio Marinaro's left leg.

We had a lot of territory in the first half, but the closest we came was from a long throw when Joey Stevens and Alex Zammit were both denied at close range. Giancarlo Mortellaro worked the keeper, but there were very few goalmouth incidents.

At the start of the 2nd half we pushed AFC back and dominated proceedings for 10 minutes. Tom Davis' quality volley from the edge of the area tipped over by the keeper was our best effort.

However another long ball on the counter saw the same player get into the box before Tobias Maher tripped him and the penalty was tucked home.

Our response was good and we continued to have most of the game. It did though take a wonder goal midway through the half to get us back into the match. Odgie's throw in was only headed to the edge of the box, where Adam Miles coolly controlled with his head to beat his man before dispatching a stunning right footed volley into the top corner. A certain goal of the season contender. The video is on Youtube.

Richard Crosby went agonisingly close to getting us level, but his header from Odgie's corner was cleared off the line in desperate fashion.

Then we hit the self destruct button for their 3rd which although well finished was a very poor goal to concede. With a little under 20 minutes remaining it appeared the game was up.

We kept fighting and got back into the game a few minutes later. Robbie Wilson switched play to Ads who controlled well and flicked to Luca Mortellaro. His cross was a dangerous one and the ball hit Odgie and fell toJoey who poached home his 3rd goal in 4 games to mark his 100th appearance for the club.

Hope was not reignited for long as AFC killed the game on the 85 minute mark. Again it was an awful goal from our point of view, finished clinically by their left winger.

This was not a pretty game, but that was dictated by the pitch. We fought well and have played worse and won recently, but ultimately our opponents clinically thrived off some slack moments as far as we were concerned. Ultimately I think they were sharper than us at both ends of the pitch and when that is the case it doesn't really matter how much of the game we had. We also conceded goals at dreadful times. Every time we got back into the game, we allowed them to score before we could build pressure.

Although they were in better shape than in recent games, which I suppose is bad luck for us, to have taken 1 point from the 2 games against them will go down as a slight disappointment this season.

We have taken 12 points from 15 in November which is a superb return. Next week we face Bisley in the first of a double header. They will be a step up in class, but a challenge we should relish.

MoM - Odgie - Heavily involved and our liveliest player. Ads had a very solid, tidy game in midfield also.

Thanks to Odg, Jay and Gio for running the line and to Baulds for coming down to support.

Note that most substitutions have not been added due to the roll on roll off.