In our final home game of the month, we put on a fine display with attitude and commitment spot on, it was difficult to fault any of the players in a game that suffered from a great deal of time wasting from around twenty minutes in, which was a great shame.
The game was set alight in just two minutes when Kevin James unleashed a speculative cross-cum-shot from out on the near touchline around 25 yards out that just looped over the keeper and dropped into the net off the stanchion, to be honest you couldn’t legislate against this sort of freak goal
After that Poppies dominated for long periods and if I were a neutral the Lymington ‘keeper would without doubt be man of the match, making point blank saves and parries – the first coming on 12 minutes when Ollie robbed Gibbons thirty yards from our goal and his clearance picked out Jack who had his shot charged down, and again moments before the half time whistle.
However for us Billy was outstanding tonight and his work at both ends of the pitch earns him tonight’s accolade.
On 35 minutes Scotty was denied and during the second half he pulled off a fine reaction save to deny Leo’s powerful header. It is true to say that we peppered the visitor’s defence and it wasn’t until the 70th minute that we breached it when Scotty picked up the ball in midfield and following a short run at the middle of the defence his pass was converted by Jack from around ten yards out, it was a relief to get that goal which we richly deserved.
Gibbons was a threat up front for Lymington and on 32 minutes looked well offside when put through but he was denied by Lamin and he had an effort parried just a couple of minutes later that resulted in a long ball up the field towards the Winton End, that saw Strongy hit the side netting.