Farnborough OBG FC

Match Report

Saturday 14th April 2007



First XI
0 - 1
Chislehurst

By Shaun Keddle

Heated, Cheated and Defeated.

Our fantastic run of recent form came to a bitter end on home territory due to a mix of a poor 1st half performance, a shocking referee and a side full of ringers despite the team being run by a senior figure head of the Kent League. I don’t mind getting beat, but it''s how you get beat that counts. Despite playing badly, we were cheated.

If my side play well, they get praised. If they play badly, they get slated. Myself and my management team will take the criticism for the performances and put my hand up if the tactics were wrong. For some reason we are only allowed to compliment referees, which I do so when they play well. When they perform badly we are expected not to say anything. Yeah? Well f*ck that, freedom of speech obviously does not apply when criticising the men in the black? What this bloke was doing at Kent League standard (or any standard) defeats me. He had the personality of a mushroom and was clearly a participant in eating the magic variant of the said herb, judging by some the decisions he made.

However on top of that we did not perform to the required standard in the first half on Saturday and complacency crept in. There was no responsibility on the field of play in the first period of this game and we all relied on someone else to do it. We spoke about complacency before the match and I made it the first item on the agenda. I kind of predicted this happening because it’s a trait that we are likely to slump into against lower placed sides. We also have beat this lot twice, although they had completely different personnel and we thought that we could just turn up to win.

Chislehurst had the majority of play in the first half although we did miss a number of chances to go ahead. Chislehurst took the lead on the half hour when a ringer was left clear in the box and finished with an effort that came of the inside of the post.

The second half was a lot better and I was really pleased with the response, but again chance after chance after chance went begging along with a legitimate goal that was missed by our ’mate’ in the middle. ‘Missed’ was an easy to word to use as he also ‘missed’ a blatant headbutt on Clark that went unpunished. The fact that he saw the whole incident but refused to act accordingly, obviously had nothing to do with it. We were camped in the Chislehurst half for long periods of time but failed to find the net and were left very disappointed.

However, when we start so poorly with a p*ss poor attitude and fall behind due to a complacent performance we cannot always claw our way back into a game. I appreciate that we were without the two Williams boys, who were badly missed, but we need to get over that and prove that there is life without them and we do have a squad capable of scoring goals and winning games. Swallow it and move on.

Mathematically we are still in this and there are a lot of big games left to play. We do need to pick ourselves up from this and get back to winning ways. A sign of a good side is how they respond to a loss. Some of the factors that lead to the loss will be investigated, but don’t hold your breath. I always thought that Chislehurst and Farnborough were good mates, but after this fiasco, this is clearly not the case.

Cheers