Taunton Town 0 v 1 Yate Town

Wordsworth Drive, Taunton

Saturday 5th September 2009

Zamaretto (Southern) League Division 1 South and West

Admission: £7.00

Programme: £1.50

Attendance: 225

Only one word can descrbe this game...dismal. Which was all the more disappointing after making a round trip of about 9 hours and 400 miles to watch it. In fairness, there wasn't anything particularly appealing about this game to start with - I simply decided to take advantage of National Express' £10 return funfare for a day out and to watch a game in a different part of the country. Taunton is a very pleasant town, the county town of Somerset, and the walk westwards from the bus station to the ground took just under half an hour. Wordsowrth Ground is quite an unremarkable ground, although one unsual feature is a very long clubhouse which stretches two thirds of the way along one of the touchlines, and in front of it a tiny litltle stand. The programme is more impressive, with good quality card cover, and with comprehensive information about the home and away sides.

Both sides had made solid starts to the season with a couple of wins out of 4 games each and both progressing in the FA Cup the previous week. As this game was relatively a local derby (with Yate being based close to Bristol, and relatively considering teams from this league are based as far away as London and Oxfordshire), a competitive game was expected. However, Taunton were really dreadful today, hardly able to string passes together and conitnually putting the ball out of play. Yate always looked the better side without themselves looking much cop, and they had several chances to score in the first half.

At half time, enduring one of the weakest, most horrible hot chocolates imagineable (at £1 a go at that), I was thinking that if ever there was a banker for a goalless draw, this is it. However, four minutes into the second half, Yate did manage to score, appropriately after a scrap in the penalty area. Midway through the second half, Taunton were reduced to ten men, which said everything about the ineptness of the officials, giving out a second yellow card for the player's second very mild foul, as did 9 yellow cards despite this not being a dirty game at all and hardly a bad foul to be seen, also as did the referee miss a blatant backpass which the goalkeeper picked up yet play was allowed to continue. As Taunton didn't look a threat with 11 men, there was little prospect of this improving, and so it proved, not having a shot on goal until the last 5 minutes, when they did have a couple of half chances.

So a deserved win for Yate, although a goalless draw would have been a fairer reflection on a dreadfully poor game. After wondering around the pleasant surroundings of historic Taunton, I boarded the 1800 coach back to London for the long journey home.