Farnborough OBG FC

Match Report

Sunday 18th October 2009

Friendly

Vets
Aaron Carpenter 2, George Kleanthous, Neil Connelly, Paul Tanton
5 - 2
Welsh Tavern Vets

By Gary Rosslee

Another Sunday morning was upon us as we all arrived in good spirits; it is probably safe to say that Macey & Aaron were literally still full of Spirits this time last week after their visit to the Bridge (and I’m guessing they didn’t mean Stamford!) .The pre match talk seemed to revolve around Darren Bent's “goal” against Liverpool and the awful rendition of ‘Oops I did it again’ by the double take brothers on the X-factor. Oh dear, It sounds like we all need to get down to the Bridge on a Saturday night!

It was good to see the return of George who had missed the previous 3 games as he was in the US watching various “American” sports such as rounders and rugby with crash helmets on??? George went on to tell us that his beloved teams whom he traipsed across the Atlantic Ocean to go and see ALL lost and he even had some spare time to lose at the tables in Vegas, oh and West Ham had still not won since the opening day of the season. Welcome back Jonah!!!

It was also a pleasant surprise to see Chris Webb who filled in at centre back as Andy Cobham was unavailable. The other noticeable absentees were Danny Saines, Simon Harvey, Robin Lipscome and Pete Harvey who was last seen having a massive row in a mirror emporium??

We lined up as follows

Gary Rosslee – GK
PG – LB
Chris Webb – CB
Tony Simpson – CB
Rich Davies – RB
Neil Connelly – LM
Matt Wright – CM
Daragh Nott – CM
George Kleanthous – RM
Paul Tanton – CF
Aaron Carpenter – CF

Subs
Macey
Steve Watson

We kicked off and played the ball around well and looked organised and disciplined. Then something quite extraordinary happened. Please make a note in your diary – the 18th of October at precisely 10:40 Aaron Carpenter, yes Aaron Carpenter attempted to play a pass to one of his fellow team mates. However true to form the cross went goalwards from the right wing and the Welsh Tavern keeper was unable to prevent the ball from going in over him. So there you had it; 1-0 to Farnborough.

We remained comfortable and alert but somehow Welsh got back into the game, their forward doing his best impression of Freddie Starr dressed as Hitler playing football, I’m sure you have all seen the sketch? He somehow evaded two challenges from Chris Webb & Rich Davies by literally falling over the ball himself, TWICE and then hit a sweet right footed curling shot from outside the box on the right hand side and the ball nestled into the far corner past the despairing dive of the Guild GK. So it was now 1-1.

Not to be outdone by Aaron, Neil Connolly then tried his luck with a cross from the left wing and low and behold his cross also managed to find the back of the net, shouts of ‘Dracula’ & ‘Jesus’ were now being aimed at the Welsh Tavern Goalkeeper (by his own team mates on the bench might I add) I’m guessing this was obviously down to his huge dislike of crosses! 2-1 Farnborough.

We went in at half time 2-1 up but should have been at least 5 goals to the good as we continued to spurn a few decent chances from wayward shots, maybe we should have just kept trying to cross the ball? Also for some reason our shape was nowhere to be seen for the last 10 minutes of the half, it just seemed like people were playing where they wanted to play so this was addressed in a stern half time talk by Neil C.

Second half kicked off with Darren Mace replacing PG at left back. Then with arguably the move of the match Darren Mace's first time ball from inside the Farnborough half found another Farnborough player who then passed to George whose deft first time touch put Aaron clear through on goal who made no mistake firing the ball high into the net leaving the goalkeeper no chance. 3-1 Farnborough.

George managed to get himself on the score sheet; as he assured us he would before the game in the changing room albeit it was around 70 minutes later than he actually promised us so all bets were off! 4-1.

Welsh Tavern managed to get a second goal with a free diving header at the far post from the mannequin salesman who scored their first goal although the Farnborough keeper was unlucky not to keep it out. 4-2. Welsh also managed to rattle the (very wide, in my opinion) crossbar so the job was not done by a long shot.

In what proved to be the very last kick of the game Paul Tanton helped himself to a very well finished goal but the assist has to go down to the Welsh Tavern player, those who were there will no exactly what I mean!

We ran out comfortable winners in the end although at times we lost our shape and discipline, but some encouraging news was we didn’t moan at each other like we have done on previous occasions and didn’t get on each others' backs.

MOM was Matt Wright for another display of non stop running, tracking back, and tackling, well played mate.

Also a big thank you to Rod Loe who kindly refereed the game for us at the last minute after Vic negotiated with him a cup of tea at full time and a couple of Shirley’s famous Sarnies!

No game next week so see you all on the on the 1st of November.

Man of the match: Matt Wright